Calit2.Life : A day in the life of Calit2, every day.
The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) has divisions, people and buildings at UC San Diego and UC Irvine. This website gives readers an inside look at the day-to-day, behind-the-scenes activities of the institute from the perspective of a cross-section of contributors from different parts of Calit2 on each campus.
Calit2 Summer Scholars Poster Session - Wednesday, 9/21
By Maureen Curran
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We hope to see you there! Please pass this invitation on to interested colleagues and/or post invitation your group. For more information on this year's scholars and projects, go to: http://ucsdstudents.calit2.net/studentlist.php Please address questions and RSVP to Amy Nguyen, a1nguyen@ucsd.edu. Stories on this year's scholars: |
Don't Trash That Pen!
By Tiffany Fox
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In partnership with TerraCycle and OfficeMax, Calit2 at UC San Diego is participating in a new campuswide program called the "Writing Instrument Brigade." Used pens and other writing instruments will be sent to TerraCycle, which will "upcycle" them and make them into fun and innovative products.  But wait, there's more! TerraCycle will donate two cents for every writing instrument received to support the Sustainability Resource Center on campus. All pens, mechanical pencils, correction tape dispensers and markers are acceptable including Sharpies, highlighters, and dry erase markers. Calit2 has set up a pen recycling box on each of the floors in the mail room area, next to the ... |
Discussion Follows NYTimes Article on Supercomputers Altering Science
By Doug Ramsey
| Ever since the New York Times published John Markoff's article, Digging Deeper, Seeing Farther: Supercomputers Alter Science, about the fundamental way in which high-performance computing and cyberinfrastructure are changing the way we do science, the April 25 story has touched off an ongoing discussion about some of its conclusions. Calit2 figured prominently in the article, which included quotes from its director, Larry Smarr, and director of visualization, Tom DeFanti. Smarr told Markoff that the "profound thing is that today all scientific instruments have computing intelligence inside, and that's a huge change." But it was another quote that provoked the discussion, when Smarr argued that ... |
Albert Lin Nominated for Asian Heritage Award
By Doug Ramsey
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CISA3/IGERT
research scientist Albert Yu-Min Lin has been nominated for an Asian Heritage
Award in the "cultural preservation" category. Lin is leading the non-invasive
effort to locate the tomb of Genghis Khan while preserving large areas of Mongolia
in pristine condition for future generations.
The Asian Heritage Society/Asia Media will announce the winners of
awards in 14 categories on Aug. 20, at a gala dinner at Paradise Point Resort
in Mission Bay. Lin runs the
UCSD-National Geographic Engineers for Exploration program. |
Dominguez at MIT, Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0 and upcoming events
By Micha Cardenas
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Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0 in Digimag is out today: We are Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0 - EDT2.0. As a collective, we are already many. As a multiplicity, our goals, hopes and intentions are multiple. Our shared goals include the disturbance of borders: national, gender, genre, disciplinary, fiction/non, through the exploitation and re/performance of technology, poetry and the imaginaries of each... We create media viruses, dislocative border disturbance technologies and Electronic Civil Disobedience actions in order to imagine and bring about desired futures. We exploit existing media technologies in order to conjure spirits of mayan technologies and queer technologies in the ... |
Channel Your Inner DJ/VJ with '[Crowd] Control'
By Tiffany Fox
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The party is in your hands (or rather, at your feet) with Calit2 Media Specialist Mike Toillion's "[Crowd] Control," an immersive, interactive audio/visual installation that will take over the UCSD Visual Arts Facility Performance Space from noon to 7 p.m. tomorrow, March 11. Toillion, who is also a graduate student in UCSD's Visual Arts program, describes "[Crowd] Control" as "turning an electronic music party inside-out." "There is no DJ providing sound, no VJ providing visuals," he adds. "The audience is responsible for their experience."  The installation features a dance floor equipped with six force-sensitive pressure pads. Each pad acts as a toggle to switch for one instrument ... |
Your Country (and the San Diego Science Festival) Need You
By Tiffany Fox
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In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama emphasized the importance of STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education and careers for building our nation's future. Here's your chance to answer the President's call-to-action by participating in the San Diego Sciences Festival, the largest celebration of science and engineering on the West Coast. The third annual San Diego Science Festival, organized by UC San Diego, provides a week of free, interactive STEM activities to engage and inspire kids of all ages starting March 19 and culminating in EXPO Day at PETCO park on March 26. To learn about volunteer opportunities or other ways you can participate, please ... |
Highways Performance Space Presents Calit2/CRCA artist/researchers in somatic SENSOR
By Micha Cardenas
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Calit2 and CRCA artist/researchers Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cardenas are co-curating and performing in a new art show in Los Angeles. The press release is below and more information is available at transreal.org. The show includes the work of a number of UCSD MFA candidates as well. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Patrick Kennelly Highways Performance Space Presents somatic SENSOR, featuring Performance, Digital and Networked Media, Drawing and Soft Sculpture that Opens Borders Between Realities and Bodies Friday and Saturday, January 21 + 22, 2011 at 8:30pm |
Appointment of Micha Cardenas as Interim Associate Director of Art and Technology for Sixth College
By Micha Cardenas
| Cali2 and CRCA artist/researcher Micha Cardenas has been appointed to a new position at UCSD. The announcement from Sixth College Director of Academic Programs, Liz Losh, follows. From: Losh, Elizabeth Date: 2011/1/6 Dear Sixth College colleagues, Please join me in warmly welcoming our interim Associate Director of Art and Technology, Micha Cardenas. With degrees in Computer Science, Critical Theory, and Visual Arts and long-standing relationships with UCSD arts communities and committees to promote diversity, we feel very fortunate to have Micha join us in Academic Programs. Micha is an artist/theorist whose transreal work mixes physical and networked spaces in order to ... |
Calit2 Summer Scholars Poster Session - Tomorrow!
By Maureen Curran
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The twenty-five UCSD undergraduates who participated in the 2010 Calit2 Summer Undergraduate Research Scholars program are ready to showcase the results of their work -- everyone is invited! Wednesday, September 22 Five of the Calit2 Scholars will make short presentations during the next Calit2 General Staff Meeting on September 22 at 2pm, followed by a Poster Session at which all of the summer scholars will talk about and show their work. In addition, the poster ... |
Artist/Researcher and Lecturer Micha Cardenas Publishes Book Chapter
By Micha Cardenas
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UCSD Lecturer and Calit2/CRCA Artist/Researcher Micha Cardenas has published a new book chapter in the book Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, edited by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman. Cardenas' chapter is titled "I am Transreal: A reflection on/of Becoming Dragon". It begins with her research at Calit2 into immersive interfaces for Second Life and their intersection with possible futures of gender, sexuality and new forms of embodiment. About the book: In the 15 years since the release of Gender Outlaw, Kate Bornstein's groundbreaking challenge to gender ideology, transgender narratives have made their way from the margins to the mainstream and back again. Today's transgenders and other ... |
b.a.n.g. lab researchers present at Art and Resistance Workshop in Chiapas
By Micha Cardenas
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b.a.n.g. lab researchers Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cardenas are currently in Chiapas, Mexico teaching a two day workshop on "Digital Activism: From ECD to Mixed Reality". The workshop is part of the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics' summer course Art and Resistance. Other presenting artists include Jesusa Rodriguez, 2boys.tv and the Fortaleza de Mujer Maya. We're really enjoying participating in the workshop and the intense dialogue here with the rest of the artists and scholars at this event. You can read more about our workshop and the rest of the event at these sites: Art and Resistance course blog (in English) Arte y Resistancia blog by two participants from the Universidad ... |
Tom DeFanti Honored at his Alma Mater
By Doug Ramsey
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Calit2 visualization director and research scientist Tom DeFanti earned his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1973, and his Master's in 1970, both in computer science. The computer graphics pioneer developed the original version of the GRAphics Symbiosis System (GRASS) programming language for his dissertation. Now a "virtual" DeFanti is back at OSU, on his alma mater's Hall of Fame. The main text panel on the three-panel rotating display explains that arguably the most famous appplication of the GRASS 3D, real-time system was the "attacking the Death Star will not be easy" briefing room scene in the original Star Wars. DeFanti also co-conceived the CAVE virtual reality environment, originally ... |
PCs That Work While They Sleep
By Doug Ramsey
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San Diego CityBeat Film Critic Praises Calit2 4K Theater
By Tiffany Fox
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The 'Geek Elite' Movement, Featuring Calit2's Larry Smarr
By Tiffany Fox
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Deadline This Friday for Undergraduate Summer Scholar Applications
By Maureen Curran
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technesexual performance and artist talk next week in Durham
By Micha Cardenas
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Next week, CRCA and b.a.n.g. lab researchers Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cardenas are heading out to Durham, North Carolina to do a performance and artist talk at Duke University. They will also be meeting with the Experiencing Virtual Worlds interdisciplinary research group at Duke to discuss some of their recent writing. |
PRIME Info Session for Undergrads Wanting to do Summer Research Abroad
By Maureen Curran
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2010 PRIME Info Session (The Natural Sciences Building is on the Revelle Campus, on Scholars Drive south, near the Commons)Thurs,, 01/14/10 - 5 p.m. in UCSD's Natural Sciences Auditorium PRIME is a unique program which provides undergraduates with hands-on, full-time research experiences lasting nine weeks in internationally collaborative settings. Against the backdrop of living abroad in another culture, the ... |
Media Frenzy over the Transborder Immigrant Tool
By Micha Cardenas
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The Transborder Immigrant Tool was the subject of a whirlwind of media attention in the past week. The project has been developed by the Electronic Disturbance Theater, consisting of artists Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Amy Sara Carroll and Micha Cardenas. The media coverage included television, radio and print stories including the Associated Press, BBC World, NBC, Fox, and the UCSD Guardian. While the actual stories are too many to list here, the following is a list of some of the major articles. Many media outlets improperly reported it as an Iphone app, others attempted to discredit the project saying it is illegal, and some interviewed Enrique Morones of the Border Angels, one of ... |
Greening the Future
By Doug Ramsey
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As noted in a news release from Calit2 this morning, Calit2's Larry Smarr, Tom DeFanti and Jerry Sheehan (with CANARIE's Bill St. Arnaud) have co-authored the lead article in the November-December issue of EDUCAUSE Review. It's an overview of the challenge facing universities in the age of 'global climatic disruption,' and provides a roadmap for campuses to help pave the way for a greener future. The article is accompanied by a backgrounder that EDUCAUSE is offering as a Web Exclusive, focused on the scientific basis for concern about continued carbon emissions into the atmosphere -- and how carbon regulation will impact universities financially. The article was published in time for the ... |
b.a.n.g lab Articles in Vice Magazine and Augmentology.com
By Micha Cardenas
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Vice magazine wrote a long article this month about Calit2 PI Ricardo Dominguez and the b.a.n.g. lab. The article covers numerous Border Disturbance Art projects, including the Freephone, but focuses on the Transborder Immigrant Tool. |
'Inexpensive Desalination: Harnessing Natural Forces'
By Tiffany Fox
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Join the UCSD Sustainability Solutions Institute and the Campus Water Collaborative Wednesday, Nov. 18 for their second technical seminar, "Inexpensive Desalination: Harnessing Natural Forces." |
Recent Reviews and Articles about b.a.n.g. lab Projects
By Micha Cardenas
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Calit2 artist/researchers working with the b.a.n.g. lab have had a number of reviews and articles published about their work this month.
The new article Micha Cardenas co-authored with Felipe Zuniga entitled "IO NON HO NIENTE DA DIRE (I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY)" is in the current issue Digimag, an italian new media magazine. Since its only in Italian, you can find english text here. The article discusses the Emergency - Emergent Agency / Emergencia - Agencia Emergente project, which Ricardo Dominguez was also a part of, for the Dialogos y Interrogantes portion of the Proyecto Civico exhibition at CECUT in Tijuana.
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Calit2 Staff Photographer Wins ACP Award
By Tiffany Fox
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UCSD undergrad and Calit2 staff photographer Erik Jepsen won first place in the sports photo category in the Associated Collegiate Press' annual Photo Excellence Awards. |
Student Captures the World and Data
By Maureen Curran
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Happy Halloween from Calit2
By Tiffany Fox
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QAMA(TM) Calculator Goes Online (and hits the Times of London)
By Tiffany Fox
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Facebook Makes News at Calit2 UC San Diego
By Doug Ramsey
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When Facebook's VP of Technology, Jeff Rothschild, delivered a lecture at Calit2 Oct. 8 at the invitation of the Center for Networked Systems (CNS), he divulged some key statistics that made news in high-tech publications that follow the data center industry. Rothschild's talk was webcast live by Calit2 and the archived version of "High Performance at Massive Scale" is now available for on-demand viewing [Windows Media player and broadband connection required]. As the blog High Scalability reports, Rothschild divulged that "Facebook handles 30K+ machines, 300 million active users, 20 billion photos, and 25TB per day of logging data." Then in the Oct. 13 issue of Data Center Knowledge, Rich ... |
Calit2 Affiliate James Fowler Featured in Heavy-Duty Media Blitz
By Tiffany Fox
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Xconomy.com Features Calit2's Larry Smarr in a Two-Part Series
By Tiffany Fox
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Calit2 Summer Scholars Posters Now Online
By Maureen Curran
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Mixed Relations / Technesexual - Mixed Reality Live Audio Performances and Workshops
By Micha Cardenas
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CRCA researchers Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand will be doing a performance entitled Technesexual that |
Larry Smarr Speaks to UC San Diego New Arrivals
By Doug Ramsey
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On Tuesday evening, Calit2 Director Larry Smarr was the keynote speaker at the 2009 Convocation, which welcomed thousands of transfer students and freshmen to the UC San Diego campus. In his talk, Smarr went out of his way to challenge the students to work on solving the big challenges facing humanity, including global climate change. Here's the full text of his speech: It is a great honor to be part of this Convocation, welcoming all of you new students to UC San Diego. Most of you are still settling in, starting to make friends, and figuring out how to get around the campus. I can still remember the excitement that I felt, nine years ago when I was arriving here as a new faculty member, ... |
Calit2 Summer Scholars Poster Session Tues. 9/22
By Maureen Curran
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Calit2 Summer Scholars Poster Session Tuesday, September 22, 2009 1:30-3:00 p.m. Atkinson Hall foyer (aka the prefunction area, PFA) For more information about the scholars and their research: Summer Scholars ... |
UCSD's James Fowler to Appear at Warwicks for Discussion/Book Signing
By Tiffany Fox
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Virtual and Physical Spaces Unite -- Mixed Relations
By Erik Jepsen
| A performance art developed by Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cardenas, "Mixed Realtions" looks at the connection between bodies and technology within a virtual and physical existence, and explores the virtual world's ever increasing influence, socially and physically, in society.  Elle Mehrmand and Micha
Cardenas performing in actual space and artificial space using Second Life. |
Mobile HCI Community Practices and Locative Media Workshop
By Micha Cardenas
| b.a.n.g. lab researcher Micha Cardenas will be presenting at the Mobile HCI conference in Bonn, Germany tomorrow morning at the Community Practices and Locative Media Workshop. She will be presenting a paper on the Transborder Immigrant Tool. The pdf of that paper is here and it was co-written by Cardenas, Ricardo Dominguez, Amy Sara Carroll and Brett Stalbaum of the Electronic Disturbance Theater. Here's the summary: The Transborder Immigrant Tool: Violence, Solidarity and Hope in Post-NAFTA Circuits of Bodies Electr(on)/icMicha Cardenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum This polyvocal, collectively authored paper describes ... |
New in Class -- Digital Signage
By Tiffany Fox
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Union-Trib Highlights Ocean Observatories Funding
By Doug Ramsey
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B.A.N.G. Lab Researchers Summer Exhibitions
By Micha Cardenas
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b.a.n.g. lab researchers at Calit2 have been very busy and have a handful of upcoming and recent exhibitions! Follow these links to find out more!
Transborder Immigrant Tool tool at ISEA 2009 The Transborder Immigrant Tool will be exhibited in 'Space is the Place' exhibition at the Gallery of the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, as part of the program of ISEA 2009 which takes place in Belfast and Dublin Ireland this year. The exhibition will run from the 27th August - 1st September 2009. The exhibition includes a number of video poems written by Amy Sara Carroll and designed by Calit2 researchers Ricardo Dominguez, Micha Cardenas, and CRCA researcher Elle Mehrmand. The voice ... |
Welcoming New Assistant Project Scientist: Derek Lyons
By Bill Tomlinson
| This week a new Assistant Project Scientist named Derek Lyons is joining our research group. Derek and I worked together at MIT in the summer of 2001 on the AlphaWolf project. Since then, Derek has been busy, finishing up an M.Sc. at Oxford as part of his Rhodes Scholarship, going back to MIT for an S.M. at the Media Lab, doing his dissertation at Yale in Cognitive Psychology, and spending a year at Reed College (his undergraduate alma mater) as a Visiting Assistant Professor. For the next two years, we'll be working on an NSF-funded project titled "Narrative-Centered Computing for Childhood Environmental Computing." It's great to have him in the group!... |
Calit2 Composer-in-Residence Roger Reynolds Named University Professor
By Tiffany Fox
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Midterm Presentations by Calit2 Summer Scholars This Week and Next
By Maureen Curran
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The 24 UC San Diego undergraduates who are Calit2 Summer Research Scholars are about half way through their summer of full-time research. They will be making their midsummer presentations this week and next. |
Jailbreaking
By Rajesh Gupta
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There are basically two models of mobile software distribution: access controlled such as iphone and symbian and community rated such as android. Given the popularity of iphone, developers have sought to bypass Apple control -- also needed for such things as background processing beyond Apple's sandbox for communications transport -- via Jailbreaking. Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF, the ACLU of software developers, had filed exemption request to jailbreaking from DMCA to enable applications obtained from sources other than Apple Appstore. http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/dmca_2009/RM2008-08.phoneunlocking.exhibits.pdf Last week, Apple strongly came out against jailbreaking and the ... |
4K Film Premiere and Videoconference Link Calit2, Brazil, Japan
By Doug Ramsey
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On Thursday, July 30 Calit2 and the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) were part of the first super-high-bandwidth 4K feature film premiere streaming on three continents. The film by Brazilian director Beto Souza, "Enquanto a Noite nao Chega" (While the Night Doesn't Come), made its debut to a packed theater at the Electronic Language International Festival (FILE 10) world festival in Brazil. Simultaneously, the film (actually, 4K is a video format) was streamed in real time over high-speed optical networks to the Calit2 Auditorium in Atkinson Hall at UC San Diego, and to Keio University's Design Media lab in Yokohama, Japan. With only ... |
Micha Cardenas at Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics' Summer Encuentro 2009
By Micha Cardenas
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b.a.n.g. lab researcher Micha Cardenas will be presenting a workshop at this year's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics (HEMI) Summer Encuentro in Bogota, Colombia. The title of her workshop is "New Hacktivism: From Electronic Civil Disobedience to Mixed Reality Performance". The outline for the workshop is below. The Encuentro's theme is "Staging Citizenship". From the description of the Encuentro: "Our 7th Encuentro invites interested participants to investigate "cultural rights" and their complex relationship to citizenship in both historical and contemporary contexts. We understand cultural rights as a juridical figure, a technology of power and an articulation that brings ... |
Ricardo Dominguez in Creative Fix
By Micha Cardenas
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UCSD MFA candidate Sheryl Oring's project Creative Fix invites audience participants to record a short statement on how they would "fix the country". She then shares the videos for the public on YouTube.com. Watch this Creative Fix featuring Calit2 PI and UCSD Professor Ricardo Dominguez. |
Becoming Dragon at the I-5 Gallery in Los Angeles
By Micha Cardenas
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If you're in Los Angeles this weekend, come by the I-5 gallery in the Brewery Artist Complex and see a 25 minute documentation video of Becoming Dragon. In addition to Calit2/CRCA researcher Micha Cardenas, several UCSD MFA candidates including James Enos, Glenna Jennings and Clare Parry are also in the show. There will be two artist talks held to discuss the work in the show as well. MFA Conversations Part II Conversation: (NOUN) 1. An informal spoken exchange of thoughts and feelings; a familiar talk. |
Tower Sounds: Ancient Voices and Electronics
By Tiffany Fox
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