VISA 0120 Foundations Media: Computation + Art

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Script for Faunce Arch Day Tours (Historical, Present, Future):

HISTORICAL – Diana Friedman
Today we celebrate Faunce Arch for its contribution to brown’s history since it was built in 1904.
Faunce House was originally named Rockefeller Hall when the west end of the present building was erected in 1904. At Commencement 1930, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave $600,000 for the enlargement of Rockefeller Hall, requesting that the building be renamed Faunce House as a memorial to President Faunce who had died in January.

In the early 1980s changes began to return the building to its purpose as a student center, as Faunce House underwent a major renovation, designed by architects Goody, Clancy and Associates.

Faunce Arch has seen many historical events that occurred at Brown University. For example, when the news of Japan’s surrender came in 1942, the ringing of the University Hall bell brought students out of their dormitories to unite with an impromptu band in a parade to the Pembroke campus, where the women joined the procession which went down Thayer Street and stopped at the flagpole for the singing of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” The students proceeded underneath Faunce Arch. Classes were suspended and a convocation called in Sayles Hall, at which Bruce Bigelow delivered a moving speech citing Brown’s contribution and honoring those who had died.

Furthermore, during the general unrest of the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, a student strike in May of 1970 followed upon the announcement on April 30 that Unites States troops had entered Cambodia, and on May 4 of the unfortunate death of four students shot by National Guardsmen during a demonstration at Kent State University. On the evening of May 4, after a speech by Senator Jacob Javits of New York, a mass meeting on the Green was held to vote on a strike in protest of the war. The next day a rally of 1,500 students in Meehan Auditorium demanded that the University take a stand against the action in Cambodia. The procession went through this very arch. This event was exactly 39 years ago today

PRESENT – Rhianna Shaw
Even though the Van Wickle Gates are the official entrance to Brown University, Faunce Arch sees a lot more activity throughout the year.  In fact, when I first visited Brown over three years ago the first piece of Brown property I stepped onto was right here.  I’m sure I’m not alone in that.  If one considers the ends of the Brown campus Pembroke and Wriston (sorry Perkins!), Faunce Arch is pretty central in connecting them.
Today the arch is occasionally used for arch-sings by various a capella groups, particularly at ‘First Friday at Faunce’, a student-run activity that happens on the first Friday of each month.  On the 4th November last year the arch saw masses of students flood through it as they all paraded onto the Main Green to celebrate Obama’s victory and then proceeded to march through it and around campus.
Faunce Arch is also a focal point on campus, with a giant, detailed campus map and bulletin boards displaying posters of events to come and photos of events past.  The airport shuttle runs from it, everyone arranges meetings under it; people even take shelter under it!  Our celebration today is just a way to give something back to Faunce Arch.  Thank you Faunce, and thank you all for coming!

FUTURE – Jina Park
There are currently a lot of new plans for renovations at Brown University. One of the upcoming renovations include renovating Faunce House to create the Stephen Robert ‘62 Campus Center at Faunce House.
A Boston-based architectural firm, Schwartz/Silver has been selected to design and execute the $15-million renovation. The firm specializes in two types of projects – renovation of historically significant structures and construction of modern buildings. Schwartz/Silver designed Princeton’s Andlinger Center for the Humanities, which required dramatic interior renovations of two 19th-century buildings while maintaining their outer facades. Andlinger was hailed as a major success when it opened in 2004.
Together with the student resources and services center located in J. Walter Wilson which was also recently renovated, the new Campus Center will represent the realization of key objectives in the Plan for Academic Enrichment:  fostering a greater sense of community at Brown and more effectively integrating the academic and co-curricular lives of students. The campus center’s construction could result in Faunce being closed for all of the 2009-10 academic year, and, with a host of other projects set to be completed in coming years, will change the daily lives of most Brown students.

When asked about the Faunce House, Schatz said he has been drawn to the building’s iconic arch. “Almost every student who takes a class during the day has to walk through the archway at some point,” Schatz said. “It’s both a gateway into the green and also a focal point for visitors.” Director of Student Activities Ricky Gresh has put together a planning committee composed of administrators, faculty, undergrads and students from the Graduate and Medical schools. Their first meeting included a tour of Faunce. “I’d never realized how broken up the building was,” said Eleanor Cutler ‘10, campus life chair for the Undergraduate Council of Students and a member of the committee. If you take a look around and begin to notice how separated Faunce Arch is to the Faunce house of which it is a part of, you might not be very surprised to hear that, to make the building more connected and accessible, there are plans to make entrances through the Faunce Arch, which will make it a even more public and active space at Brown. Whereas now it is just a passageway that connects the main green with waterman street, it will also become an entrance way into the newly renovated student center after the renovation.
Therefore, Faunce Arch Day is also an attempt for us to recognize and appreciate Faunce Arch as the way it is now, as it will undergo changes starting next academic year. We hope that by having this tour, you have had a chance to think more about and appreciate Faunce Arch. Thank you very much and happy Faunce Arch day!

I chose to translate my favourite video, starring Muffy and Linette! I played with the humour of the video using a MousePressed function. I felt that it was perhaps too simple so tried adding other functions to the it, but it wasn’t as effective, so I removed them.

Link to PDF: Faunce Arch Day

We chose to create a program somewhat like Paint, that enabled the user to point the wii at the screen created by two candles (placed conveniently in front of the laptop) and press ‘A’ to draw. Hitting ‘B’ enabled the user to change to a random colour. ’1′ cleared the screen.

(So called Penguin because the idea was that when one mastered this program they would be able to draw such an object.)

Aims for the future of the project:
1. Get a slide bar to adjust stroke width.
2. Create a colour palette to enable artist to choose which colour to use.
3. Simulate a better cursor.

On Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 12-2 p.m., Jina, Rhianna and I had 50 surveys completed regarding Faunce Arch Day (FAD).

The questions were:

1. On average, how often do you pass through Faunce Arch in a week?

never rarely once a few times daily multiple times a day

2. Do you ever stop to think about the arch as you pass through it?

Yes No

3. Do you think of Faunce Arch as a public space?

Yes No

4. Do you think Faunce Arch is underappreciated?

Yes No

5. Do you like the idea of ‘Faunce Arch Day’ to celebrate the arch?

Love it Sounds Fun That’d Be Okay Erm, what? No That’s ridiculous I hate it

6. Would you come to ‘Faunce Arch Day’?

Yes No

The Results of our Survey

According to our experiment of doing a survey under and nearby Faunce arch, most of the people tended to pass by the arch at least few times a week, most of them passing through the arch daily or even multiple times a day. More people never stopped to think about the arch as they passed through it. (31 didn’t and 19 did) A pretty surprising result as we were not expecting any people at all to have thought about the arch. Approximately 4 out of 5 people thought of Faunce Arch as a public space, and thought that the Faunce Arch is underappreciated. According to some people, doing our experiment(the survey), actually helped them rethink about and appreciate Faunce Arch more. Most people were either excited for or confused about the idea of ‘Faunce Arch Day’ to celebrate the arch, but no one hated the idea. 70% of the people who filled out the survey said they would or might come to ‘Faunce Arch Day’.

Our Final Conclusions:

It is important to note that the blue bars are from the surveys taken under Faunce Arch, whilst the red bars are the ones taken on the Main Green. Conclusions drawn from this survey:
• The majority of students pass through Faunce Arch with some degree of frequency.
• Although most don’t stop to think about the arch as they pass through, more than a third of them do.
• There is general consensus that it is a public space, although interestingly the fraction of students asked under Faunce Arch who see it as private (~1/3) is significantly larger than that of those who were asked on the Main Green (~1/6).
• The majority of students (78%) think Faunce Arch is underappreciated.
• There were mixed reactions to the idea of Faunce Arch Day, but the two most frequent responses were ‘Sounds fun’ and ‘Erm, what?’, suggesting that most people saw it either as a good event or else were just confused by the idea. There were also a fair number of people who thought it would be ‘okay’.
• Nearly twice as many people said they’d come to Faunce Arch Day as those who said they wouldn’t.
• Those who took the survey under Faunce Arch were significantly more willing to attend Faunce Arch Day.

After making some correlations between two of the questions, further conclusions were drawn:
• The majority of people who think it is underappreciated would come to Faunce Arch Day (and vice versa). There is no correlation between those who don’t think it’s underappreciated and wouldn’t come to Faunce Arch Day.
• The majority of students asked under Faunce Arch who think that Faunce Arch Day ‘sounds fun’ pass through it multiple times a day.
• There is no relation between those who think of this as a public space and those who think it is underappreciated.
• All of the students asked under Faunce Arch who pass through it daily think that it is underappreciated.
• Except the points stated above, there was no clear correlation between the frequency with which students passed through the arch and there answers on any of the other questions.

Here are some photos from the experiment:

This is intended as a rather light-hearted self-portrait. There was a time when I would colour-coordinate ALL my clothing and accessories. Now not so much, but sometimes I still find it hard to resist!

This portrait shows the difference that the colour of make-up, clothing and accessories can have, and in doing so shows different sides of the self. That is not to say that what I wear effects my behaviour, but I think it is an interesting exploration of the superficial differences bought by physically changing one’s appearance.

The mousepressed option takes a different look at the effects of changing colour, by setting everything else monochrome and making the eyes ‘flash’. The face takes on a different ‘mood’ as the eyes change colour, which I used to demonstrate the importance of ones eyes in expressing emotion.

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Christian Jankowski

Christian Jankowski and his work, Angels of Revenge. Photo / Kenny Rodger

Christian Jankowski is a contemporary multimedia artist who was born in Göttingen, Germany, in 1968. His work is largely focussed on photography, video, literature, performance, and instillation. He is very interested in mixing and meshing private and public, fiction and reality, which is epitomised in his piece ‘My Life as a Dove’, in which a professional magician transformed him into a dove, where he had no private life until his re-transformation. In his work ‘Let’s Get Physical/Digital’ in the boundaries between public and private are blurred and confused as the piece culminates in an intimate dialogue between Jankowski and his girl-friend that is transformed into actors playing parts.

One of his more famous creations is his work ‘Telemistica’. This is a video installation in which Jankowski questions several TV fortune-tellers live about the success of his upcoming artwork, which is, in fact, this very piece. It was included in the 1999 Venice Biennale.  I was particularly interested by this piece:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=32246520673

which is set on various rooftops and particularly appealed to me because of it’s sense of humour and also because of its relevance to our current assignments.  The open subtitles state that this is about “letting loose, relaxing, and contemplating on nature”, something akin to the slow passage of time.

He now lives and works in New York

The Holy Artwork, 2001. Video. 15 minutes, 52 seconds. Courtesy of Klosterfelde and maccarone, inc.

 In this 15-minute video, Jankowski approaches and collapses at the feet of a televangelist and remains there while the man completes a sermon about art and God.

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This piece is, in fact, a documentary about something of mine, two something’s of mine, that mean a lot to me…

I enjoyed creating it because there is humour in it and I like that it keeps the audience on edge… I hope!

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This is a piece that, as you can tell from the name, is about oversleeping. Nothing is as frantic and hurried as someone when they are late, and I hoped to embody that in this film.