August-September 2009
Lights… camera… UD
How many takes does it take to film a commercial? A lot more than my predicted five.
Ten UD students and a film crew braved uncooperative weather, unruly hair, accidental guest appearances by faculty and students, and an almost bicycle crash during today's first day of filming near the chapel, Science Center and ArtStreet.
Behind the scenes, Tracy Hughes, assistant vice president of marketing, helped keep it all together. The commercial, to run during televised men's basketball games, showcases campus and advances the University's reputation, she said.
Director Branson Veal, on his first trip to UD, said the favorite part of his job is collaborating with clients to create moving images.
Filming will continue on campus Wednesday, so keep an eye out for camera crews, unruly hair and distracted bicyclists.
Would H.G. Wells tweet?
Last Friday, I attended guest lecturer Simon J. James’ presentation “H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine: The Aesthetics of the Fantastic. While listening to the lecture, I began to consider both predictions about the future and communication’s place in it.
I wonder what H.G. Wells would think if he could see people now. In The Time Machine, the Time Traveler travels to the future to find that humanity has taken a giant step backward: Their world is completely devoid of technology and their communication skills are primitive.
I’m not sure if Wells would be elated or bemused by the fact that people today communicate with their thumbs, they take music with them wherever they go and that celebrity flubs go viral in seconds.
Speculation about the future is nothing new, and no idea is too strange. More than a century after The Time Machine was published, we have made great strides in technology and communication. At the same time, I can’t help but wonder if with all our technology we haven’t taken baby steps backward. Many of us are so used to communicating electronically that we have difficulty communicating face-to-face or communicating appropriately. (VMA anyone?) Additionally, electronic messages can leave a lot to be desired. It’s hard to determine tone, and sometimes emoticons can be puzzling.
According to James’ research, Wells had a pessimistic view of the future and was skeptical of language’s ability to convey experience accurately. My own views are decidedly more optimistic. With all the innovative devices we have now, I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Art, science and community. Eco-artist and artist-in-residence Betsy Damon believes combining these three elements can transform our water systems.
Damon's fascination with water began in 1985, when she was making a paper cast of a dry riverbed in Castle Valley, Utah.
"I decided to give my life to learning water and trying to communicate water," she said.
Damon has worked with communities to incorporate design and art into our water systems. Her projects show that certain designs create water movement that clean water and make it healthier. In 1991, she created a nonprofit organization called Keepers of the Waters.
Damon's work has spanned cultures. In Chengdu, she worked with the Chinese government to create The Living Water Garden, in which polluted water is cleaned as it moves through various sculptures, aeration systems and ponds. The six-acre gardens provide members of the community a place to relax, enjoy nature and learn about the water-cleansing process. In 1998, Damon received the Top Honor Award from the Waterfront Center for the project in Chengdu.
"The planet is slowly dying," she said. She believes that we can save it, but "water has to be what you plan first."
Betsy Damon's Keepers of the Waters exhibit is at ArtStreet through Oct. 8, 2009.
More than a hobby
Imagine having a database of thousands upon thousands of pictures. Now imagine choosing the greatest photographs for an exhibition. It sounds like a painstaking process, but for Adam Alonzo, it is part of his passion.
A few years ago, Alonzo ’93 bought an expensive camera and made a promise to himself to take pictures every day. He has kept this promise and has since created the Five for Five project: Each day he posts his top five photographs.
Alonzo takes many more than five pictures each day.
“I’m not too concerned with numbers; I take as many as I feel like,” he said. “Some days it might only be 15, other days it’s 100 and some days it’s over 1,000.”
From those pictures Alonzo posts his top five, and from those pictures he chose his favorites for his current show.
“It’s not too difficult to pick the top 30 or 40 that I want,” he said. “I look for photos that are arresting, tell a story and are beautiful. I don’t do themes.”
Alonzo’s current exhibition is in the Roesch Library gallery through Sept. 30, 2009.
Learning Ramadan, the hungry way
A table of piping-hot rice, spicy chicken and spring rolls in the corner of McGinnis Center auditorium set Bridget Ebbert's and my mouths watering and stomachs growling as we waited to break our daylong fast Thursday night.
Ebbert, a graduate student and campus minister for sophomores, and I joined 45 students of various faiths fasting for the Muslim Student Association's annual campus Fast-a-thon, an educational and charitable event in honor of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Ignoring our rumbling tummies, we sat discussing the wave of fatigue, difficulty concentrating and new empathy for the world's hungry we'd experienced throughout the day as we refrained from eating.
After a presentation by the president of MSA and a guest speaker, we broke our fast with homemade Pakistani food baked by a local Muslim family. Many students also donated the money they otherwise would have spent on food that day to the local food pantry House of Bread.
Beyond the new appreciation I had for my daily meals, I couldn't help but admire the Muslim students' persistence. Where I had fasted from sunup to sundown for a single day, the Muslim students do so for 30 consecutive days.
Yet, practice doesn't necessarily make perfect, said one Muslim student at my table, who admitted the challenge of fasting during Ramadan is continuous.
A new day
Students return to campus this weekend. If they wake up early enough, here are some daybreak scenes they might see, captured by UD's Media Production Group.
Happy birthday
Brother Frank Deibel, S.M., may get more e-mail than usual today.
The retired librarian, who keeps up correspondence with more than 100 friends thanks to the Internet, turns 101 today. His birthday was announced on NBC's Today show.
When he was a mere 99, he talked with us about his experience, his passions, and his advice for a long life: "Pray. Go to Mass. Go for walks. Do them every day.
"And keep up with the computer. It can keep you connected to life."
Hear, hear. Happy birthday, Brother Deibel.
Can we do what the salamander does?
Talk about graceful writing. This morning, a link to the cover story of this month's issue of The Scientist showed up in my inbox. The article begins:
"The first cut is too small. With gloved hands, Nobuyasu Maki slices the cornea again, this time with more pressure. The anesthetized amphibian doesn’t twitch beneath the spotlights focused on its speckled yellow head, no bigger than a large Tic Tac. A timer beeps somewhere in the lab, like a heart monitor in a hospital room. Switching instruments, Maki raises a pair of miniature tweezers vertically above the newt’s head, then plunges the point down into the eye. The alarm, unrelated to this experiment, stops. Maki pulls the tweezers up, extracting a small, clear orb, no larger than a pinhead. He lays down the instrument and picks up the motionless newt, placing it inside a plastic carrier. “It’ll wake up in an hour,” he says, stripping the latex gloves from his hands."
It's a detailed look at the work of Panagiotis Tsonis, director of UD's Center for Tissue Regeneration and Engineering (TREND), and other researchers working to understand tissue regeneration in newts, salamanders and other cold-blooded creatures. If we can figure out how they regenerate parts of their bodies, the researchers reason, perhaps we can apply this knowledge to treat human ailments.
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