Collaborative Storytelling

"Adric wasn't supposed to have had this long to regret his decision..."

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  Becca Rebecca He'd expected to be busted weeks ago ....

  August 30 at 6:07pm · Like
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  Cassandra Hamilton Thank goodness his wife, Tess, kept his secrets.

  August 30 at 7:22pm · Like
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  Alec Hammond Tess, while filing out this year's 1040 thought "As long as my fetus survives Adric's secret is his own business."

  August 30 at 8:25pm · Like
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  Michael Chemers Adric watched her filling out the form with her neat, angry calligraphy thinking, not for the first time and not without a certain wistfulness, that meeting her was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

  August 30 at 9:03pm · Like · 1
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  David Boevers But now it wasn't just his problem. One misstep now would be... unfortunate for all three of them.

  August 30 at 9:37pm via mobile · Like
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  David Boevers He recognized the tentative cadence, at least this wasn't something to worry about. The only time the woman across the hall dared to knock on his door was when she couldn't figure out what her grandchildren had done to the TV. He wouldn't miss her at all.

  August 30 at 11:02pm via mobile · Like · 1
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  Nicole Addis He opened the door to answer the knock of the old woman. Her perfume entered his apartment before the door was wide enough to see her.

  August 31 at 12:00am via mobile · Like
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  Cassandra Hamilton As did the badge and gun nuzzle the old bat agilily pressed to his nose.

  August 31 at 1:42am · Like
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  Corey David Just as Adric was about to say "hello" the neighbors cat leaped from her haggard shoulders and ran into his apartment. She shuffled in after it without a seconds delay, and was at awe...

  August 31 at 1:54am · Like
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  David Boevers "Hands in the air!" she barked in a tone Adric would never have associated with the old woman. "And if you know what's good for you, you'll stay still until Officer Mittens finishes her sweep!"

  August 31 at 11:36am · Like · 1
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  Eloise Albrecht Mittens quickly finished the perimeter sweep that cats normally do in a strange room, but then, quite uncharacteristically, sat back on her haunches and said "they're clean". Adric felt the room spin as he tried to reorganize his sense of reality fast enough to keep his his family together through this newest challenge.

  August 31 at 3:02pm · Like
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  Jake Rothermel "You checked everywhere? Nothing?" the old woman asked. "'They're clean,' means THEY ARE CLEAN, Agent White," replied the cat, angrily dipping its head to start unceremoniously cleaning itself in the middle of Adric's cheap knockoff Persian rug.

  September 1 at 10:25am · Like
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  Cassandra Hamilton "Really?" snapped the old woman. She wagged her gun in the direction of Tess who was struggling to descretely slide the 1040 into her purse. "How about skipp'n your balls, Agent Mittens, and getting the bad lady before she runs?"

  September 1 at 12:07pm · Edited · Like
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  Michael Chemers Adric was at a complete loss, and experienced fury that Tess, damn her, seemed to take it all in perfect stride, as if this new event was no more unmotivated than the distant tinkling of an ice cream truck advertising it's presence; something to be remarked upon, however briefly, and then just as casually dismissed.

  September 1 at 1:41pm · Like · 1
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  David Boevers "i'd grab the bad lady if we could PROVE she was a bad lady. I told you to wait, and now we've got nothing - again. I'll be in the car." and with that Officer S.W. Mittens leapt out the window in one fluid motion.

  September 1 at 1:57pm via mobile · Like
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  Michael Chemers A long moment. "Did you see that--" began Adric, but Tess whirled on him. "Oh, nothing's ever good enough for you, is it?" She looked at him with a firey disdain that he had heretofore seen her reserve only for shellfish, which she detested. "I'm sick of it. Sick of it and sick of you, Gordon."

  September 1 at 2:41pm · Like
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  David Boevers An hour later, White and Mittens were at their regular table at the diner trying to put this morning's failed bust behind them. They were splitting a tuna lunch, White with mayo, crackers, and a black coffee, Mittens with a dish of tepid milk. Mittens casually lit up a joint.

  September 1 at 3:32pm · Like · 2
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  Bonnie McDonald Stark Back at Adric's apartment, there came another knock at the back door, more insistent. "Hello?" A woman's voice. "Hello! Are you still in there?!? Hello?" Another knock, banging this time. "Hello?! It's your car! Something's happened in the car park! Hello!!"

  September 3 at 12:10pm · Like
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  Michael Chemers White, back at the restaurant, stared disconsolately into her tea, and muttered almost inaudibly: "I'm convinced that if we go back there now, we'll see what we're looking for, maybe in his car already." "Fuck you and your fucking hunches," mrowed Mittens.

  September 3 at 12:58pm · Like
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  David Boevers Mittens stubbed out the joint on the pad of a front paw and said "Let's go, we're late for roll call."

  September 3 at 3:16pm · Like
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  David Boevers - THE END -

Some Slides From Today

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Ellipses...

Nothing better than to look at the schedule and see there's a guest (one that you've already booked)...  Got myself some new business cards.  I am 82% satisfied...  Wondering what would happen if we put that recently repaired art project in the dishwasher.  Going to continue wondering...  Guess it was a good thing to have not already got myself a Kindle...  Post Option Coordinator email count?  Markedly reduced...  If they decide they can't target the chemical weapons and they won't target the leader, I'm not sure they have anything left to target...  If Homeland returns before I watch a single Ray Donovan on the DVR I think I'll forgo the latter...  Fantasy Football draft tomorrow night.  Now accepting draft advice...  Going to have to figure out how to get my insurance to deduct a payment I made myself from my deductible...  First day of new parking permits and I took the bus in and walked home...  Really liking my Pebble watch.  Would like it even more if it could do even more...  Just can't get me enough American Ninja Warrior...  Been really free with the Amazon spending lately.  Might have to reset the governor - and turn off that "one click" button...  Working on a new morning routine.  It involves smoothies and the prior night's MSNBC highlights...  Slowly but surely remembering all of my Greenpage tricks...  Congress is upset that he's having them vote, although Congress would also be upset if he weren't having them vote...  Looking to really boost the TUMBLR traffic.  Not sure how...  Next home project is closet kits.  Every project can't be the coolest...  Got a nice shout out from my boss at the opening get together and some nice emails from a couple of colleagues.  Nice to be appreciated...  Someday I will learn to spell "colleagues."  It will take longer because of spell check...  I shouldn't, but I think I like the new Pittsburgh parking meters...  We mean it this time: We're looking for new homes for THREE of our cats.  If you know anyone looking for a pet, please shoot me a message...

Greenpage Comment of the Week

Vote for comment of the week. Here are this week's contenders:

Student #1: has left a new comment on your post "Haptography: A digital future with feeling":

I love that technology has advanced so much that someone can sit at home and feel something that isn't there, but the concept frightens me. Does that mean that, instead of going to a museum and seeing art, they should just go home and look at a screen? Or should someone never go out and buy their clothing, just sit on their computer and designed based on uploaded texture? It bothers me that we are coming so close to never having to step outside and experience the real world. Sure, this could be incredibly handy. Using this to teach training dentists and doctors what to look for is quite efficient and I imagine it to be effective. And if this was available in a museum, it would be a great addition to an exhibit. But this should still not be confused with the actual sensory that is feeling. You are not feeling something directly, you are feeling what a stylus has felt for you. That is a bit disturbing. This is a great technological advancement, but it worries me that people will view it as a stand-in for their own judgement. 

Student #2: has left a new comment on your post "Coding as Graduation Requirement: One School is Ma...":

Honestly, I think this is crap. I think that college (most anyway) already has a numerous amount of diverse requirements that provide us with a well rounded education, and schlepping on another BS requirement will just be another class the university is forcing students to take. I want you to take a step back and remember GE's (General Requirements). What are they? Pretty much sample courses. Sure if you spend enough time on a subject you'll retain something, but taking one class on computer coding wont help you become experts on coding, let alone knowledgable. And before you can take a class on coding, students should be required to learn about computers generally before you force them to learn an entirely new language in a very limited amount of time. Can you imagine someone who hardly knows how to operate excel, learn to code? I think that learning to code could be useful (to some people). But the undertaking of actually preparing people to take such courses and then actually retain and make use of this education is just unrealistic. 

Student #3: has left a new comment on your post "What Makes an Artist a Professional for Tax Purpos...":

I don't understand how the IRS can say de Mars is not a professional artist when art is all she does for a living. If she's willing to make $20,000 a year on her art and not work a day job, it seems that it should be her choice to claim art as a profession and live on the little money she makes from it. How does the IRS expect her to get all of this money that she now suddenly owes them? It's unfortunate that the accountant she has been going to wasn't more educated on tax laws regarding artists. It seems like it might be worth it for artists to go to accountants who have specialized knowledge in the tax laws that apply to them. While I do feel for de Mars, I think that her story serves as a great example of the reality of why artists need day jobs. As great as it may be for an artist to do nothing but their art, it's just not realistic in today's society. What if deMars were to have a medical emergency? How would she support herself? The burden of her medical debt would fall to others. Others should not have to provide for her because she chose the life of a starving artist. There are logical points to be made on both sides of the argument here, and I'm not sure exactly where I stand, but I do know that I will certainly be looking into tax laws more before I graduate! 

Student #4: has left a new comment on your post "Are Arts Leaders “Cultural” Leaders?":  

I definitely agree -- the arts has a huge role in politics, if it's not always gaining the headline. There are lots of examples we tend to forget about -- like Bread and Puppet -- who I think are an amazing example of successful political art. I was a part of an exhibition in Japan called "On the Planet." It was in conjunction with the world's convention on biodiversity and it was an attempt to say that artists can have a say about biodiversity and the state of the planet's environment, not just scientists and politicians, and It was very successful, if small. It was a great moment for me, at least, to really think about that link -- that art is just another medium, like science, like literature, to get ideas out. I think that in general, people get scared to make a statement. If you stay in the middle and remain neutral, it's safer in relating to audiences and gaining general support. It's the role of everyone to make known their thoughts and it's our job as artists to use our field to make known our beliefs and ideas and help with understanding. I think it can and should be done, but it takes a lot of bravery to do it and in a world where you never know where your next funds are coming from, it's hard to commit to something and risk loosing that. Alas! 

Student #5: has left a new comment on your post "(Re)Search: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Lov...":

I understand the positives of Facebook for situations like this dramaturgy research. It's an easy way to poll a large amount of people at once. However, the section of people that you are polling is very limited, and are all probably pretty similar since it would be all the people you are friends with on Facebook. The biggest problem I have with Facebook is that no matter how you spin it or how you try to look at it, it's still a social networking site. It's unprofessional. Having your cast look up your dramaturgical research on a social site, at least to me, appears sloppy, and unprofessional, as if you couldn't be bothered enough to think of a better and more appropriate way to present your information. On the flip side of that, if the concept of the show is to get involved in that kind of social media, then it could turn out to be an interesting use of the site. Of course, in that case, the use of Facebook or other social sites is really a commentary on the social networking site itself, which is another dimension to consider. Ultimately, if the concept of the show is to use social networking sites such as Facebook and Tumblr, then make sure that what you are doing with the sites present the commentary that you are actually looking to showcase to your audience. If the concept of your show has nothing to do with that type of social world and internet communication, then avoiding the sites as a source of presentation is going to make your work look more polished and more professional.

We Can Rebuild Him

So I finished a small home project this week.

Years ago, I must have been 13 or 14 my father and I collaborated on a series of Plexiglass sculptures.  It was a way to meld his hand skills and my developing math and coding skills.  The project came about as a BASIC programming exercise utilizing the then amazing high resolution graphics (Wikipedia says it had a 256 pixel display - I don't even recall it being that high).  Anyway, we would start with a shape - in this case it looks like a triangle - and then a series of FOR/NEXT loops would increment one or both of the coordinates of the points causing them to shift.  In some cases the incrementing value was also incremented causing the point not only to move, but to accelerate.  Dad would then take the image, copy it into one page per piece, blow it up to actual size (there was no real scale or calibration here, just made it bigger), and then proceed to cut the pieces out of acrylic.  The assembly laid out the pieces in a circle, doubling all but the ends of the sequence to give it a sort of periodic flow.  I think we did about 8.  I used to have one of the simpler patterns in my apartment, simpler plastic but a more complex assembly involving a lamp to try to cause the pieces to edge light.  Bee had one, Lois had one, but my all time favorite was this one.  I called it "The Samurai."

This piece lived at my folk's house in Chicago and so it was part of the big move back in 2010.  It turned out I packed it poorly and when we finally opened the box in the fall of 2011 the piece has been severely damaged with at least half of the profile pieces having broken off.  I've been looking for a picture of it out of the box, but truth be told since it was my own fault and I was a little upset I think I decided not to take pictures.  The upside, if there was an upside was that all of the breaks looked clean, no shattered bits, and many of the breaks actually were at the joint.  So instead of throwing the thing away I just put it in a box hoping some time down the line I would get to fix it.

Some time down the line turned out to be 2 years later in the summer of 2013.

One of the things that had been keeping me from proceeding was that I never learned from my dad what the cement was.  Finally one night I just balls it and typed "acrylic cement" into Amazon and picked the one that looked the most likely.  We were underway.  Next I needed a jig, or actually more of a story stick.  off to the scene shop.

You can sort of see the state of things here in the photo at the shop.  What I needed was a gauge I could clamp to a piece that was there in order to place one of the pieces that had snapped off.  Looking at the spacing and doing some math I came up with a wedge that was 1/4" wide at the root and then opened up at 7 degrees on both sides.  The last step was to rip a groove in the face of the gauge to make a spot for the clamps to grab on without having to grab the next piece.

Back home to the garage.

Here's the starting point of the refurbishment.

This is setting in the first piece.  You can see on the base that when the parts snapped off they left some marks (sometimes some shards) where they had been.  I was able to use those along with the gauge stick to place things properly.  Mostly it worked pretty well.

As a side note, the brown handled spring clamp in that photo was my dad's, probably one he obtained from Plastics Incorporated in Rosemont where he learned to work with Plex at a company owned by a college buddy.  Something about sitting in my basement working on acrylic with some of the original tools just like my father had was almost a spiritual experience.  In particular, the smell of the cement brought back many, many memories.

I learned a little bit along the way.  First up was that the original jig used to make the piece had some drift in it.  If I remember correctly, dad set up to mount all the pieces simultaneously using a piece of plywood with a bunch of radiating fins on it.  This eliminated the possibility of iterated error, but also meant the placement was only as accurate as the jig.  Suffice it to say the jig wasn't exactly accurate.

As I moved around the piece it became clear that a little shimming would be necessary.  Also, after one or two pieces I learned that I couldn't sit my gauge on the base.  Although it made the pieces easier to clamp it also made the gauge harder to remove after the piece had set.  And as if that wasn't enough, if placed on the base, the capillary action that makes the cement penetrate the joint also caused it to creep up the gauge and leave a mark on the adjacent piece.

Here you can see some of the snapping action from above.  You can also see the gauge clamping process, and if you look at the piece on the left (that was the first piece I replaced) you can see the creeping cement where the gauge block was.

I managed to do two pieces a day for about two weeks.  I would do one going out the door in the morning and then another coming in the door in the evening.  The cement would set within minutes, but would need several hours to reliably hold the weight of each piece.  Even then I could sometimes correct a little bit of a lean with a strategic shim.  The can says the cement cures over 48 hours and continues to strengthen even after that.

All in all fairly successful.  Now after two years of sitting broken in a closet I have one of the cooler things I ever did back on display.

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time:

Does digital technology help theatre – or hinder it?

Stage | theguardian.com: I'm seriously beginning to wonder whether the Edinburgh international festival has yet to experience that new-fangled technology called the electric light, or whether they might still be writing on parchment using quill pens. While director Jonathan Mills has programmed his 2013 festival with a technological theme, supposedly exploring "the way technology seizes and shifts our perceptions of the world, translated and made manifest by artistic visionaries," most of the theatre shows seem oddly old-fashioned.

Posted by David at 9/01/2013 02:31:00 PM

Cinema's Greatest Effects Shots Picked By Hollywood's Top VFX Specialists

Features | Empire: From Eadweard Muybridge and George Méliès to James Cameron and Phil Tippett, the history of movie effects is basically the greatest bedtime story never told. Except it’s a yarn so full of dragons, dinosaurs and mimetic polyalloy killing machines sent back from the future that you’d never get any sleep after hearing it. As Life Of Pi and Avatar amply demonstrate, there are many chapters still to be written and innovations still to be forged, but whether in-camera, matte, prosthetic, CG, or just lovingly modelled by a man with a passion for Plasticine, effects have brought magic to the movies since the silent era. In a unique celebration of the art, Empire asked the people who make them happen to pick their favourites.

Posted by David at 8/31/2013 02:38:00 PM

Are Arts Leaders “Cultural” Leaders?

diacritical: The two terms sometimes get mixed up. They’re not interchangeable. For the most part, the big cultural debates of our time take place without participation of our artists and arts leaders. If artists aren’t participating – let alone leading – it’s difficult to make the case that they’re cultural leaders. Somehow, our public debates about values – and by extension, what our culture looks like – have become the exclusive domain of politics. To speak out on values can only be seen as a political act in America. Issues like gun culture, family values, social services, and public space are owned by narrow political forces who have a vested interest in them and who frame how they’re discussed.

Posted by David at 8/30/2013 04:16:00 PM

What Makes an Artist a Professional for Tax Purposes?

1800accountant.com: For a writer, artist, actor, model, or musician, thousands of dollars in taxes can often ride on a single question: is the artist a professional or an amateur? At first glance, it might seem like an easy question to answer — but there are some surprising twists in the rules, especially in state and IRS rules on tax deductions.

Posted by David at 8/30/2013 04:11:00 PM

In Memoriam: Tayneshia Jefferson

Stage Directions: Tayneshia Jefferson, a professor of stage management at Carnegie Mellon and USITT board member, died on July 31, 2013 after a brief and sudden illness while visiting family in Houston. She was 41 years old. Her family will be holding services in her hometown of Houston, Texas, Saturday, Aug. 10 at St. Monica Catholic Church. Throughout her career Tayneshia served on the artistic and management staffs of Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre (UFOMT), Austin Lyric Opera, Zachary Scott Theatre Center and ProArts Collective, the Alliance Theatre, Theatre Under the Stars, Houston Ebony Opera Guild, The Kennedy Center and more. For USITT she served as a mentor for the Stage Management Mentoring Project and Vice-Commissioner for Stage Management as well as the Chair of the People of Color Caucus. Her sudden death left her friends, colleagues and students in shock. When reached for comment David Grindle, executive director of USITT, wrote: “Tayneshia was an inspiring person who made an impact on our industry and the people in it. As a stage manager and production manager she remained a harbor of calm in many a stormy sea. As an educator she inspired a generation of young people to be better than many of them knew they were capable of being, both as professionals and as people. USITT has lost a vibrant member, board member, and leader. However, our organization is better for her many years of involvement and we are pleased to say she was one of us. Our deepest sympathy goes to her family and to all those in her extended theatre family that were touched by her life.”

Posted by David at 8/26/2013 04:06:00 PM