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May 07, 2008

Hello World

Christopher Bakers piece Hello World! or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise interests me on many levels. Upon approaching the piece I was overwhelmed by the visual and aural stimuli I was presented with. Chris managed to create a landscape of thousands of videos that leads one on a journey of experience. Hmm what do I mean by that sentence? I believe that the experience of this piece is always shifting -- one can attempt to view one video at a time-enjoy the videos as a whole - enjoy the audio- one may chose to look at this piece as a texture Chris has created tiling the white wall in the nash gallery. All of these experiences and more come from this single piece.

What really excited me about the work was the apprehensions I initially experienced when viewing the videos. I felt as though I was evading these peoples privacy looking into their bedrooms and offices. After a moment of unease I realized that these videos are all harvested from YouTube - they are intended to be public for the public to view... This transition from apprehension to acceptance lead me to think of the second part of the title How I learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise

I mentioned above the texture that this piece creates on the wall. I found this to be very interesting. The varying brightness levels of the videos creates a depth it seems as though one could walk into these gaps that have been created on the white walls. Another interesting visual texture that is created can be experienced when you are close to the wall looking down the piece. It seems as though the videos are shingles on a roof--- they have a 3D layered quality to them. These visual tricks remind me that we too, like the poor Mac computer, need to process this information, and sometimes the overwhelming stimuli can trick our minds.


If anyone is interested in revisting this project Chris has it documented here Hello World... Documentation

April 15, 2008

Reflection

From art works in Nash Gallery M.F.A thesis exhibition, the most interesting piece was Gail Heidel's work.
It was at the middle of the gallery, and made of bricks. The reason that I like the piece among other is that the piece looks like "lego" that I loved to play with. When I was a child, everyday I spent 5 hours to play with lego. I made car, airplane, train and many other things. And, at the end of the play, I always designed to make a city in my room. Because the city is made of many buildings and complicate roads, it was fun to design. My city was somehow interrelated to its elements, and Gail Heidel's work reminds me the city. As my city, his work looks like interrelated to its elements. Each buildings that made of different shapes of bricks are interacting with others. To me, it looks like a giant city or computer system.

When I watch the piece in specific, the center of the work is made of bricks that have cube shape. The brick was a perfect normal brick shape, and didn't have dates on it. The center was made of "prototype" bricks. However, when it goes to outside of the piece, the buildings were made of distinctive brick shapes. To me, the changes looked like an "evolution" of the bricks. Thus, I felt time passage from the work. Around the piece, there are a lot of bricks that have different shapes, and it looks very interesting.
Because the piece was made of one kind of material, it unifies whole works. However, because the shape of the bricks are all different, it also made me to feel variety at the same time. The work shows two different things (unity and variety) at the same time.

The coexistence of Unity and variety is not expressed in only material itself. It is expressed in the structure of the piece, too. As I said, it looks like a city that perfectly designed. However, at the same time, at the out side of the piece, there are several buildings and bricks that are not just in order. The structure of the work looks like planed or designed in center, but not in outside of the work.

Hello World! -Reflections

Past all of the large pieces of artwork in the very back of the Nash, the back section of the room is filled with noise and an entire wall is covered with small square videos of all different kinds of people. I chose to reflect on this piece because of its impact. You see the dark room and don't know what to expect and then you walk in and hear noise before seeing anything. Then you turn around and see a wonderful collage of people covering the wall.

The use of technology in this piece is incredible and essential to the piece. The last thing I expected to see when I walked in the room was a massive amount of videos put together in a giant collage. If there were just a couple of videos, the piece would not mean the same thing. The large amount of videos aren't just to show a variety of people, they are needed in order to create a massive amount of noise.

You can't pick out ONE person speaking or singing or whatever they are doing in their video. The piece is about enjoying noise. At first I found it frustrating to look at this piece and not be able to pick out one video to listen to. I was able to get close enough and look at one individual video, but I couldn't hear them specifically no matter how hard I tried. This was extremely unenjoyable. Then I did what the title of the piece said to do. ("How I learned to stop listening and love noise") I stopped listening, and it opened up an entirely new world of the piece. Our world is full of people and noise, but we don't necessarily stop to listen to noise as a whole. We listen to individual people and what they have to say. This piece brings to light all of the noise we're missing out on. When a lot of people talk at the same time it creates a new sound. This piece shows how many people come together with their own ideas and thoughts and create one unified sound.

Another interesting point about noise is that it doesn't matter what language you are speaking or what age or gender you are. The noise that this piece creates encompasses all of these things and I think that is beautiful. The piece has a whole new meaning when you sit back, close your eyes and just listen.

The images on the wall are also incredible, but in a different way. There are so many things going on in the collage. It would take hours to look at each individual frame. No two are the same, or at least not that I saw. There are people of all ages doing many different things. Some are dancing, some are showing signs, some are just talking. It's amazing to see everything that people do when they're being filmed. I loved how the videos spanned the full length and height of the wall. It is so large that you cannot stand back and see the whole thing at one time. You have to walk along the back wall to see everything. The fact that there aren't any gaps in between any of the frames connects with the idea of noise, because they are connected together into one unified collage. Even though each frame contains a different person, they are all contributing to the noise of the room.

This piece really made me look at noise in a different way. I used to think of noise as annoying and chaotic, but if you take the time to just listen it is actually quite amazing.

Scapes Response

One of the most interesting pieces on display at the Scapes exhibition at the Nash Gallery is Christopher P. Baker’s Hello World! or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise. The piece is a 60’ by 10’ video projection collage of hundreds of YouTube videos, specifically “diary” type videos in which the subject of the video addresses the audience directly.

Although this piece is in the back of the Nash, gallery-goers encounter it immediately upon entering the space. When I first walked into the gallery, I thought there must have been a large group of people discussing something behind the back wall. I was quite surprised to turn the corner and see that it was a large group of people talking, in a sense. Only these people were video images projected onto a wall, their voices emitted through speakers. Although all the work in the exhibition is excellent, Baker’s audio-visual creation starkly contrasts some of the more traditional, static forms presented by the other artists.

It is difficult not to be awestruck by this piece. When you first encounter the piece it is difficult to take it all in. How does one begin to look at a piece of art that is 60 feet long? I decided to sit down on one of the benches along the back wall and try to watch the video in the best way I could. Sometimes I would decide to focus on one specific video and watch just that one. Other times I decided to take in the entire piece at once.

To say that Hello World! is mesmerizing would be an understatement. Part of that effect comes from the way the videos transition. Some videos will fade into the next, but most will flash quickly, creating a blinking affect.

Christopher’s work raises interesting questions about communication in the 21st century. Is it possible to talk to everyone and no one at the same time? How has the digitization of communication affected interpersonal relationships? Have new mediums of communication, specifically video-sharing Web sites, enhanced communication or diluted it?

I find it interesting that all of the people who made these internet videos believed that they had something very important to say. They are either discussing issues that are very important to them or divulging some aspect of their life that they think the world should know. In that way, they are addressing the entire world at the same time; whoever has internet access could be a potential listener. And yet it is entirely possible that absolutely no one will decide to watch their videos.

How would these people feel if they knew they were part of an artwork? I would imagine that anyone would be excited to appear in a gallery, but at the same time I think that these people would be a little dismayed to see how their voices are lost among the voices in the crowd. By taking away their words they lose some of their identity. They become little more than talking heads, their words indistinguishable above the dyne.

The title of this piece is reminiscent of the classic Kubrick film Dr. Stangelove or: How I Learned to Stopped Worrying and Love the Bomb. The Cold War has been over for nearly 20 years now and the world doesn’t worry about nuclear disaster the way that it used. So what is one of our greatest fears nowadays? One is the increasing computerization of society. Some people are afraid of technology, that it will “take over” our lives, that personal relationships with real human being will be replaced by false, digital relationships. Think of Facebook, MySpace, AIM, etc. Some might argue that those are modes of communication that stifle person-to-person relationships and become a replacement for human interaction. But we don’t need to worry about this, Christopher posits. We should just learn to love this blur of communication: the videos, instant messages, junk email, Facebook applications, text messages, and all their other various forms. The new modes of communication we’ve created are not necessarily bad, just different. It’s a beautiful mess.

Response to R Justin Stewart

I think the piece that I ignored most during my initial visit to the exhibit, or put out of my mind the fastest, was R Justin Stewart’s self-portrait (October 7th- November 6th). His series of blue inkjet drawings is overshadowed in many ways by the spectacle of his piece bus structure 2am-2pm. However, the more I mull over this work, especially in terms of it being a self-portrait, the more intriguing I find this piece to be.
In the series, each blue page is a representation of a day within the time frame noted in the title. There are a total of thirty. The shade of blue varies to a greater or lesser extent, but always remains within the palette of blues that appear in the sky. On each page there is also small kind of discrepancy that takes the form of one or two thin, white, pixilated, jagged lines. Sometimes the lines spread out, other times they cross each other. They seem like a flicker of lightening amidst a huge blue back drop.
Something that expresses the self (of the artist) is contained in every page using some variation of shade and line pattern. It is a representation of the artist’s self on a given day within the framework of these two qualities. The pages by themselves could not show much about the individual, but the placement of them in a line creates a month-long timeline that gives a sense of movement and change. For example, a couple of the pages seem to have matching shades of blue signifying a consistency in the self from one day to the next; but then the third day ruptures this with a deeper shade of blue showing a greater change in the individual. The fourth day returns to shade of blue from the first two days (October 14th-17th). There is a shade of blue that appears more often than the others, and it has a greater likelihood of being repeated for two or three days at a time. This might mean a couple of things: it may be a sense of normalcy within the self broken up by deviated days, or it could be a dullness of the self broken up by days of more interest. What ever the case may be, the choice to use blue to represent the self is interesting. To me, blues that exist in the color palette used by the artist have an inspirational quality. Since they remind me of the sky, the overall effect is both mythical and optimistic.
The white lines can be interpreted in a million different ways. From my viewpoint, the lines reminded me of a figure diving through the sky. The patterns of the line signified something different about the degrees of openness, grace, awkwardness, fear, etc., of moving through the space we live in.
The viewer can walk past the piece from left to right to see the progression, they can walk from right to left as if moving backward in time, or they can back away from the piece and see the continuum of time all at once. In this last option, the viewer can almost break into a different dimension in which time exists not just a fixed point but in all points at the same time. I kind of like this thought because it alludes to greater possibilities of life beyond what we know as the third dimension.

April 11, 2008

Description of Caroline Kent’s Work-Lisa

When I entered the Nash Gallery, the first thing I saw was a series of paintings by Caroline Kent. I was as intrigued by their unusual shapes and their titles as I was by the painting itself. A painting called “I Saw the Sound of the Romanian Language” and a series of drawings in the next room (which seemed to be a meditation on Romania and its language) clued me in that Kent’s relationship with Romania must be the driving force behind her work, though I’m not sure what the nature of that relationship is.

There are clear similarities between her paintings; all of them have a sculptural quality, all have narrow cutouts or “spaces”, and all have similar color schemes and patterns. The repetition of these shapes all over the gallery gives the impression that this is an obsession of Kent’s, an idea that she has to work out through many, many different pieces. Through different media too, since she displays paper cutouts and drawings alongside her paintings as well. I could see how long she had been working with this one idea, or this one place, and I could see how important it is to her. There’s a very intimate quality about the exhibition of this obsession of hers, like she is inviting everyone into her struggle with expressing this idea. One of the pieces that immediately gave me the feeling of being invited in is “I Carved a Space for You,” which is an almost-rectangular piece with two thin lines cut out of it. When I got to this piece, I was thinking, She carved a space for me. That is sweet. But could I fit in there?

This brought up a problem in my mind, thinking about the smallness of the spaces she had created in her work and what that meant. “I Carved a Space for You” was friendly and inviting on one level, but exclusive on another. Thinking in terms of Kent’s experiences in Romania, it seemed to me that the size of these spaces might indicate the extent of her own willingness to yield to another culture, or perhaps America’s willingness (or unwillingness) to create spaces for other cultures within its own. I also started to think about the “spaces” Kent had created as “gaps”––gaps between cultures or between languages––that people need to get around or across in order to build new relationships. One piece, called (I think) “Look to the Rock From Which You Were Hewn” made me think also that Kent’s work might represent her own roots and the spaces in her life where she had been cut off from them.

Language is clearly an important aspect of her work as well. In her series of drawings, it looks as though a child wrote over them with Romanian words or letters. Her paintings almost seem like letters themselves, and the graffiti-like patterns on them have that quality too. These shapes get repeated in different contexts, signifying different things, like words and letters do. It’s as if she has created this metalanguage through her art to talk about the Romanian language and culture, and I think that is the impression you get when you walk into the gallery. That she’s had to develop this alternate language where she can express these complicated ideas, and that the viewer has to go in and figure it out and somehow bridge the gaps she has created between our language and hers.

"bus structure 2am-2pm"-Michelle

It was hard to miss Justin Stewart’s “bus structure 2am-2pm,” as it took up much space directly to your left when you enter the gallery. But that was not the only thing that attracted me to it: it was so geometric and architecturally driven that there was an immediate sense of order and symmetry to it. I thought that it would have been interesting with clear thread (like fishing line) so that from a distance the wooden balls and copper and steel appeared to be floating, but I really enjoyed the blue thread that was there (plus this way people are less likely to run into it!). The pattern of the thread changes depending on where you stand; if you look from one angle, you can see all of the threads running to their respective places, but if you look from dead center of the wood and copper structure, it looks like fewer strands that are much thicker.

Even though it’s not an interactive piece in the sense of “touch me, play with me, figure me out,” the fact that you can approach it from so many angles and walk between the outer sides and the inner structure, that it does feel interactive in a sense. I wished that the outer steel weights were bells; wouldn’t that have been fun (but annoying for the person at the front desk of the gallery!)?

Speaking of the weights, that system is so intricate; there must have been a lot of work put into the hanging alone! Think about it: having to find perfect balance for each thread so that the entire thing would hang straight. I did hear that the wood and copper structure was put on something flat until all of the threads were hung, but there still would have been room for error if one (or more) of the threads wasn’t quite taut, weights were estimated incorrectly, if the threads weren’t just the right length, etc. I wish I could know more about the actual setting up of the piece, but wondering is good, too—keeps me occupied and out of trouble. : )

I also wondered about the center structure: how are the wooden balls and copper wire held together? Did he drill little holes into the wood? Superglue? Both? I have no idea, but I’m curious. Architectural pieces must demand these kinds of questions, because they aren’t questions I’ve generally asked myself before—except for the headless, rhinestone horses at MIA (which was a fascinating process)! I also wondered how the whole structure tied to “bus structure” as in the title. I don’t think I looked closely enough at the elaborate center structure to notice specific patterns, but it was all so intricate that it wouldn’t have mattered. But then again, I’ve seen Metro Transit maps of their entire system and that in itself is incredibly elaborate; perhaps that was the artist’s point: we have an elaborate system that is complete, functional, and holds itself together. If that were the meaning of the center structure, I would venture to see the threads as those who ride the bus, because there would be no reason or need for such an intricate busing system (or any busing at all) if not for its riders. The riders (or thread) go off in their perspective directions and each one is different in length when it reaches its weight (which could maybe portray a final destination kind of scenario??) but still attached to that busing system. The piece gives a very neat and self-contained perspective of Metro Transit, which makes me think that the artist has spent a lot of time on the bus, has depended on it, and has come to appreciate it or at least recognize its immense presence in his life. I have personally found the busing system to be difficult, tiring, and time consuming, so a fresh perspective was interesting and encouraging to see.

I did have one problem with the piece, though, and that was in the title—specifically the “2am-2pm” part. What bus is going at 2am? I couldn’t catch a bus at 2am and had to walk in the freezing cold from downtown to campus because we hadn’t planned the return trip. Okay, end rant.

In the end, I found the piece engaging and calming in its geometric nature; if I had a really large living room, it would be a fun addition!

April 10, 2008

Tim Roby's Exhibition

When going through the “Scapes” exhibition at the Nash, Tim Roby’s artwork caught my eye because of its quirky quality. My first encounter with the unusual shapes and distinct color scheme presented as paintings, drawings, and three-dimensional structures made me curious to find a deeper meaning. Initially I couldn’t come up with an underlying theme and felt that maybe these were all new objects to me, however, the more I focused on individual pieces I got the odd sensation of being surrounded by objects not quite familiar – yet not completely alien either. All of a sudden the long 3-D tube (colored nude on the outside and red inside) reminded me of a capillary blood vessel. The thing it was lying on (colored gray) looked like a storage cart. The standing pink object seemed similar to a portable AC/heating unit. The black object creeping over the gallery wall - barely kept from falling seemed to be a bird-cage come to life, and the painting of what appeared upside down on its legs suddenly became an overturned sofa-chair.
The color scheme of pastel blues, pinks, and nude colors as well as a few kicks of yellow, black, red, green, and a lot of white had an interesting effect on me as a viewer. I initially think of the use of pastels as having a submissive effect on the environment and making objects pale in comparison to other things, but that is not how I felt with Roby’s work. It definitely added to the whimsical element of the 3-D objects and made me feel like a child in a candy shop surrounded by a lot of sweets. It seemed to have an air of playfulness about it – like it was daring to be touched but that it also might spring into action and surprise you if you did. One such object that looked enticing was a yellow wedge (looked like cheese) mounted at the tip of a longer, thinner blue post. As a viewer you almost wanted to pick it up or touch it because it looked like it might fall over yet it stood very solid on the ground. I also feel the colors had an effect on how I interpreted the shapes, because the same tube I described as a capillary could have been a pipe if colored silver, or a hose if colored green. It was this peculiar color – shape combination that required my innovative side to come out and I would recommend any new viewers to put on their best thinking caps.
The paintings and drawings had a little bit of a different vibe. They were more structured and most reminded me of manufactured materials like parts of buildings, doorways, and furniture. One specific painting done on a wood background with black blades and bumpy pink surfaces on the bottom made me think of parting a dog’s fur and getting out a microscope to zoom in as if looking for fleas between rows of individual hairs. After taking a look at everything, what I felt everything had in common was the sense that these were small pieces of larger units severed from the whole and made to stand independently. Perhaps not all physically separated, but sometimes zoomed in, zoomed out, or focusing in on a perspective of an object that a person would not normally take into account. None of the objects were very complicated or intricate – they all seemed rather simple and basic which is probably why they felt like such familiar bits and pieces.
After taking all of this in without any prior knowledge about Roby’s artwork, it was very interesting to go back and look at the titles that he provided for each piece. It was at this point that I discovered that there seemed to be a political theme going on which really made me change my mind about how to view the objects. With titles like “The Fragility of Democracy”, “Negotiating with Terrorists”, “The Power and the Glory”, “Rise Above”, and “America the Beautiful,” I found a new interpretation for what I saw. All of a sudden the cage became a symbol of imprisonment, a lump on the floor became a symbol of our country’s failures, and the cheese wedge became more of an Olympic torch. I could definitely see two distinct mountainous structures in a drawing after I read the title “Beyond the Mountain is a Mountain”. I’m not sure if political commentary is what Roby intended or if he wanted the viewer to make up new meanings for what he portrayed, but I was glad to have my initial experience and then to see everything in a different light the second around. I still don’t have any answers about this exhibit, but I think that’s the best way to see it. I think it’s meant to engage your creative side and it definitely got me to think twice about everyday objects. I would best relate this experience to comedy skits where a group is presented with a seemingly everyday item like a pool noodle and asked to come up with as many different uses for it as possible.

R. Justin Stewart's "Self Portrait"

R. Justin Stewart's piece entitled "Self Portrait (Bus October 7th–November 6th)"

Immediately upon entering the Katherine Nash Gallery, the multiple shades of brilliant blue rectangles lined horizontally across the wall are hard to miss. Stewart's piece demands an inquisitive eye, for it is not straight away noticeable that the color squares have white scar-like lines methodically etched on 30 of the 31 pieces. After that, one can see that each solid blue square has a date marked in the lower right corner, and that many of the scar-like marks are replicated in others: the same length, same location, same twist to the left here, or a sharp upward turn there. These lines are none other than the bus route taken on the day each square represents, presumably traveled by the artist himself, considering it is entitled "Self Portrait."

One can walk from one end of the horizontal "portraits" to the other, and develop a narrative about the bus routes taken. Many days there is just one way taken; other times, a return trip is evident, overlapping the other line. Some of the days have a line that looks completely different than any route we have seen before, indicating a change in routine, perhaps a visit to a friend, a trip to the mall, or maybe he fell asleep on the bus and it took him too far. Some days it looks like a transfer route was taken, revealed by multiple lines criss-crossing the vast expanse of blue. Then one must consider the significance of the color blue, assuming there is one. The changes in shade can also create a narrative, possibly one signifying a particular emotion for that day, but really could be any number of factors, such as specific data compiled to create a darker color for one day and a lighter color for the next. And as you near the end of the 31 days, you come across a very pale day, so pale that it is very difficult to see a bus route so you stare for awhile trying to spot it until you think, "Actually, I don't think he took the bus this day. What on earth did he do that day?" He is clearly someone who relies on the bus system, given that 30 out of 31 days include at least one bus ride. However, if all of the days had had a bus route marked, I wouldn't have taken notice. This pale blue day is special, and one that that gives the piece a certain feel to it.

Stewart has uniquely graphed out a simple daily routine, and though it is his own self portrait, it is portrayed in a way that many can create their own story for it. In a way, it looks like a story board, and though it is a finished artwork, there is so much room left to work with that each viewer has the freedom to create their own narrative, effectively finishing what Stewart began.

My own narrative allowed me to imagine in what circumstances I would need to ride the bus so frequently. This person probably doesn't have a car, which leads to two more possibilities: that is a voluntary choice, or an involuntary reality. The first situation forms in my mind the image of an environmentalist, and that is the narrative I followed in my own interpretation. The second option (involuntary reality) implies a certain level of needs unmet. In any case, both narratives are very different and both demand a willingness to inquire and discover and create, at the same time as bring to light some social situations that just need to be thought about.

April 08, 2008

The bricks

Gail Heidel’s brick sculpture/display/work of art is a unique use of the medium clay. I’m also amazed at the way she filled up the space in the Nash Gallery with several bricks being prominently displayed on shelves, scattered among the walls. My eyes were first drawn to the elaborate brick structures, which ranged greatly in height, how close the bricks were together, and how many bricks were used. Then I noticed how each cluster of bricks had a slight modification to the brick, such as a piece cut out of the middle. These bricks were professionally cut to the artist’s specifications, and then arranged in a freestanding architectural design. On the wooden shelves, there were the bricks’ shapes on display, and as far as I could tell, there was only one of each special cut.
I think the shelves were used as an organizational tool to show how each style of brick contributed to the central structure. The numbers on the bricks serve as a coding system, and although there were usually one or two digits in common, each brick had a unique code. It’s like you could look at the shelves as a classification system and find “brick 9232” easily because they are so plainly displayed on the shelf. Since the central structure doesn’t show each brick as a whole, the shelves show what the bricks look like apart from the main piece. Also, I think the shelves of bricks help to frame the work of art in its space because otherwise, the central structure randomly trails off and ends. With the shelves, there is a distinct sense of framing and containing the art.
The center of the central structure is comprised of the standard brick shape; no pieces have been cut and the brick has not been altered in any way. That part of the structure is very simple, sturdy, and there are few spaces in between because the bricks fit so well together. However, the structure has several extensions from the main structure that experiment with variations of the bricks. Some of these extended structures are still fairly solid, depending on how much of the brick was removed, but some of them have been changed so much that they can only make very small structures. If they were to be any taller, they’d fall over for sure.
I interpret this piece as both a model of civilization and of life in general. For instance, the basic building block of life is the atom, and it’s from that particle which everything else is formed. As the basic building block (the bricks) are modified and slightly broken down with different formations, they become a little less stable and able to work well with each other. But if you follow the line of transformation back to the original structure, you can see how well the original model worked. This interpretation also works for architecture in civilization. The basic structure of a building is fitting bricks together with little to no gaps in between. This is why the original brick mold works so well, but when the brick is altered, the structure becomes less sturdy until eventually, they can’t even form a full structure.
A deeper interpretation is that this is how relationships are formed. By taking the same analogies as for the previous interpretations, it’s once again clear that things cannot form tight sturdy structures if they are missing key parts that make them a whole. People cannot work together if parts of their relationships are missing; it ruins the structure all together.
I think Gail Heidel’s brick construction can have that first impression that reminds us of our childhood and building blocks, but if you consider the deeper meaning behind her art, it still has the basic principle of the building blocks. Plus, I had this strangely intense inclination to start knocking over those teetering structures. Maybe Heidel had that as her main intention: to bring the audience back to their childhood with her art.

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.