The Unmentioned

I visited the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh with my Design I class early this morning. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it's an art museum that specializes in installation art, works of art that typically take up an entire room.

I didn't know what to expect, and I was delighted. I've never seen anything like it.

My favorite piece was Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Dots Mirrored Room, a room with "Twister"-esque dots scattered all over the floor and mirrors in every direction; the dots looked like they went on forever as far as I could see. I walked up to one of the corners of the room and shared a brief greeting with 4 clones of myself (one on the ceiling, one to either side, and one that was split down the middle at the point where the walls met). My instructor, Brian Ferrell, suggested that we try lying down on the floor and looking up at the ceiling, which was another mind-bending experience.

Another interesting piece was James Turrell's Danaë, a room in which one wall was illuminated by what appeared to be a blue overhead projector screen at first glance. But after approaching the "screen" and reaching out to touch it, we discovered that it was actually an illusion of a solid flat surface that disguised the wide open space behind it.

If you haven't experienced this museum yet, I definitely recommend it. Regular admission is $6 for students, $9 for adults, and free for kids under 6 (and Thursdays like today are half-price days for everybody).

Posted by ChrisU at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While surfing the Net and searching for some information on Morgan Spurlock, I happened to find his weblog.

If you plan on attending the lecture he will be giving at Seton Hill University on Thursday, October 6, you might want to check it out.

Posted by ChrisU at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been considering purchasing an audio recorder for the past year or so, but I never felt that it was really necessary -- not until the incident at the Honors Convocation, anyways.

So, in order to help me become a more accurate and effective journalist, I invested the money and bought myself an Olympus digital voice recorder.

The model I bought, the VN-480PC, is a pretty nifty gadget. It can record up to 8 hours of sound, has an approximate 25-hour battery life (running on two AAA batteries), allows you to index and organize audio files on the device itself, and even gives you the option of transferring audio files onto your PC via USB, after which you can easily e-mail or archive them.

The quality of the recordings are impressive (I tested my recorder by taking it with me to my French class and recording the entire lecture) -- and the Hold function of the device makes it easy to put it practically anywhere without worrying about one of the buttons accidentally being pressed.

Needless to say, it will be a new companion for me each day (I intend to continue to use it to record class lectures, and then store them on my PC at home), especially when I'm on assignment as a journalist.

It even gave me an idea that might help me with my photography assignments: since I often feel like a bother when I'm interrupting someone just to confirm their identity, wasting their time as I try to scribble it down correctly, I can now instead simply ask them to say their name/title. I'll be able to keep the recorder on during photo assignments, walk up to them and ask, and then keep on moving around and getting more photos without missing a beat. Of course, I should probably check the recorder near the end of the event, just to ensure that I can understand the names they gave well enough to reference them later in the official SHU directory (or other sources) as a check for spellings.

Posted by ChrisU at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I stumbled upon this jewel while skimming some webcomics... It uses Macromedia Flash, in some really cool ways. Check it out.

Outside the Box Webcomic - Created by Brendan Cahill

Posted by ChrisU at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)