RockBlog

The Video + Animation + Games Symposium was hosted by UMD's VizLab in the Kirby Ballroom this past Friday. Students from our campus (and from the Duluth community) mingled with presenters from Minneapolis to share knowledge and enthusiasm for these digital media artforms.

Interactive exhibits and “hands on� demonstrations were featured at the Video+Animation+Games Symposium, including a sound design experiment station, hands-on video production and filming techniques, demos by Apple, Maya and 3D Studio Max trainers, a game lounge, Kirby Game Room demos of Dance Dance Revolution, Halo, Fight Night and demos of student-made games. Noon keynote speaker Lane Raichert is a Minnesota native and creative and production veteran in the TV animation and computer game business.

Who says Grrrls don't game?!

I gave a presentation about our Dijital Pasaj project, and students from my classes demonstrated their work for interested viewers. Right now we have no department or academic major (that I am aware of at UMD) dedicated to Video + Animation + Games EVENTHOUGH these art forms are so immeshed in our daily culture. Our era won't be known for its great contribution to stained glass, or bronze sculpture or fresco painting...

So, in the Art + Design Department at UMD, we are opening our eyes and minds to the potential of new creative forms that are so driven by innovations in digital technology and a public hungry for customizable gadgets and entertainment. Although we do not offer a major in game design or a class in animation, we do teach several classes, where we try to integrate concepts from these disciplines into creative projects.

Dijital Pasaj Website... in process...
coming soon at
http://www.d.umn.edu/~jrock2/dijital_pasaj/

Thanks goes to Lisa Fitzpatrick and her staff and volunteers at UMD's VizLab for donating their time and energy to hosting the symposium. It was a very congenial event, and well attended for our first really warm Friday this year.

See comments from students below...

Posted by Joellyn Rock at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Delilah / Persephone on the set

Posted by Joellyn Rock at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally made it to Greece to work on my DVD bonus disk Mockumentary film project.
The trip was a fantastic shot in the arm. I visited the ruins and museum at the ancient site at Eleusis where the Mysteries were held. Here I am with a portion of one of two original caryatid that framed an entrance to one of the main buildings at the site.

(A caryatid is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar)

I was lucky to catch the show Gods In Color, an exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. The show gives great examples of how the original greek sculptures from architectural sites may have been painted. (we think of them as white marble, but they were richly colored...) The 21 casts exhibited are of well-known statues (Cuirassed torso of the statue of an archer or chariot driver from the Acropolis Museum, Akr 599, the bronze head of a victor from Glyptothek München, the “Peplos Kore� from the Acropolis of Athens Museum, Akr. 679, the Lion of Loutraki, etc), of Tombstone Stelae (tombstone of Aristion, the one of Paramythion, etc), of Pediment sculptures (from the Athena Afaea Temple in Aegina, the East Frieze of the Siphnian Treasury in Delphi, parts of the so called Sarcophagus of Alexander the Great) and specimens of real pigment used in antiquity.

I shot tons of pictures and video that will aid my research for The Mysteries Project.

Posted by Joellyn Rock at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)