viz.

Screen shot of the Blanton STEVE tagger

We have written before about the STEVE in Action project, which helps art museums incorporate tagging interfaces onto their websites in order to encourage thoughtful interaction between the patrons and the art objects. This semester, we used the Blanton's STEVE interface to get a closer look at how students write about abstract art, and while we have not yet processed all the data, the experience has been very thought-provoking.

H/T Beverly Mireles

The Beyonce video above was launched this month as a part of Michelle Obama's "Let's Move Campaign" on behalf of the National Association of Broadcasters. The video mobilizes inter-cultural rhetorics in support of public health, most obviously with the shift mid-video from hip hop to Latino-inflected dance moves and music. The 'flash workout' indicates the need for solidarity among minority populations most affected by the state of food and exercise culture in America. Healthy bodies and race relations, the video communicates, are the same cause. The flag waving at the end of the video underlines a populist appeal.

Evans Dances Baldessari Sings Lewitt Via UIC

Can the Stanky Legg bring new publics to conceptual art? Perhaps this is arguable.  But why don't you make up your own mind about it while Chaz Evans shakes a leg in his Vimeo video.  Shots of Evans dancing the Dougie, the Robot, and the Hustle after the break.

We invite faculty, instructors, and staff to a workshop addressing the advantages and challenges of blogging with images.While most blogs are text-based, the integration of images can be an enriching, even vital, part of blogging formats.Viz. bloggers will discuss their own perspectives and techniques. Ashley Squires will share her semester-long assignment, where class members are following a visual theme across historical periods and into contemporary visual culture.

Wednesday, April 20th, at 3:30 pm in FAC 10

The workshop will cover the follow topics and questions:

Image Credit: The Museum of Fat Love

H/T: Layne Craig

Amidst massive media coverage of the “obesity epidemic,” visual arguments have emerged online that challenge the terms of the current debate.  One example is the website, The Museum of Fat Love, which presents a collection of photographs of smiling couples.  Similarly, Newsweek ran a series of photographs on their website titled“Happy, Heavy and Healthy” in which readers submitted pictures of themselves performing athletic feats.  Both websites called for volunteers to submit evidence that individuals classified as overweight or obese can live healthy, happy lives.  The use of visuals in both instances is striking—both websites are predicated on the understanding that overweight individuals have been misunderstood (perhaps even vilified) in the course of public debates on obesity and public health.

Screenshot "Full Body Twitter app" Johndan Johnson-Eilola

I experienced full body twitter this weekend.  Just by moving my body, I wrote a text and sent it into the twitter-sphere.  The experimental video installation "Bodies of Language" and conference panel with professors Anne Wysocki and Johndan Johnson-Eilola was really fun.  (You can see a snapshot of my interaction with the exhibit after the break.) The discussion also planted the disrupting thought that multi-media needs to get beyond the visual. What?  Get beyond the visual? 

"Bug and the Machine" Poster, Stephanie Rosen

If you are interested in science, art, video installations, interdisciplinary work, or maybe if you just like bugs, we'd recommend you stop by the following event at the University of Texas at Austin tomorrow evening.  Read more about the super-computers at the Texas Advanced Computer Center from a past viz. blog post.  Following is the summary description of "Bug in the Machine" by the Vital Arts and Theories Group: "Sixty years ago a small moth flew into a large room on the campus of Harvard University. It fluttered around, disoriented by the artificial light, until it slipped in and got stuck between two of the 700,000 moving parts of the automatic calculating machine MARK II, one of the world's first computers. The moth was

Flyer by BagNewsNotes

We wanted to share news about an international webinar hosted by BagNewsNotes forthcoming Sunday March 20th at 12 noon CST.  You can register ahead of time for this important online discussion of images from the Egyptian revolution.  For more about BagNewNotes, read our first viz. post from the spring semester.  See also our previous discussion about how the New York Times represented the early days of the protests in Egypt.

Youtube is (as self-reflexive as my video book)via MediaPraxisme

 H/T Justin Hodgson

Last month, MIT press published Alexandra's Juhasz newest scholarship in what they are terming a video-book format. Vectors Journal has hosted the online work, which collates together a set of videos by Juhasz and her students. The videos work within, as they reflect upon, Youtube. Last year, viz. writer Emily Bloom featured Juhasz's journey into the pedagogy of Youtube. Bloom helps to crystallize Juhasz's arguments about mediocre video, Youtube's popularity versus its radical potential, and the practical difficulties of teaching in the medium. Bloom's original post is rebooted after the break.

"In Search of Countess Part 1" Stephen J. Lewis H/T About Face Theatre

Tomorrow is Fat Tuesday, and what better way to celebrate than to listen to stories from a nearly 100-year-old resident of the French Quarter, George Eagerson, AKA Countess Vivian. The untold story here is life as African-American gay man in the south. In Part 1 of the 2010 interview, George recounts social realities of New Orleans, such as his initiation into gay sub-culture.  George is given the name Vivian and then Countess by older members of the gay community.  More on Part 2 when George tells about surviving Katrina after the break.