GPS Tracking Reveals the Secret Lives of Outdoor Cats

in Data, K-12, Maps, Nature, Science, Technology | October 2nd, 2020

We track sharks, rhi­no, and bears, so why not Boo Boo Kit­ty, Peanut, and Pump­kin?

The Long Island feline res­i­dents volunteered—or more accu­rate­ly, were volunteered—by their human com­pan­ions to par­tic­i­pate in a domes­tic cat move­ment study as part of the inter­na­tion­al Cat Track­er project.

Each beast was out­fit­ted with a GPS track­er-enhanced har­ness, which they wore for a week.

(Many cat own­ers will find that alone some­thing of an achieve­ment.)

In total, almost a thou­sand house­holds in four coun­tries took part—the Unit­ed States, New Zealand, Aus­tralia, and the UK.

Sci­en­tists were par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed to learn the degree of may­hem these cher­ished pets were vis­it­ing on sur­round­ing wildlife in their off hours.

Any­one who’s been left a present of a fresh­ly mur­dered baby bun­ny, mole, or wing­less bat can prob­a­bly guess.

It’s a con­sid­er­able amount, though by and large the domes­ti­cat­ed par­tic­i­pants stuck close to home, rarely trav­el­ing more than two foot­ball fields away from the com­forts of their own yards. The impulse to keep the food bowl with­in easy range con­fines their hunt­ing activ­i­ties to a fair­ly tight area. Woe to the field mice who set up shop there.

Their move­ments also revealed the per­il they put them­selves in, cross­ing high­ways, roads, and park­ing lots. Researcher Hei­dy Kikil­lus, who tracked cats in New Zealand, report­ed that a num­ber of her group’s sub­jects wound up in a fatal encounter with a vehi­cle.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, gen­der, age, and geog­ra­phy play a part in how far a cat roams, with males, younger ani­mals, and coun­try dwellers cov­er­ing more ground. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, those who have not been neutered or spayed tend to have a freer range too.

“With­out the moti­va­tions of food and sex, most cats seem con­tent to be home­bod­ies,” zool­o­gist Roland Kays, one of the US Project lead­ers, not­ed.

Amer­i­can cit­i­zen sci­en­tists who’d like to enroll their cat can find infor­ma­tion and the nec­es­sary forms on the Cat Track­er web­site.

The cat-less and those with indoor cats can enjoy pho­tos of select par­tic­i­pants and explore their tracks here.

And what bet­ter fall craft than a DIY cat track­ing GPS har­ness?

via Nation­al Geo­graph­ic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

How Humans Domes­ti­cat­ed Cats (Twice)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Central Park Bird Watcher Christian Cooper Writes DC Comics Graphic Novel: It’s Now Free Online

in Comics/Cartoons, Current Affairs, K-12 | September 11th, 2020

Write what you know.

It’s oft-cit­ed advice for writ­ers both begin­ning and estab­lished.

Thus, Jules, the teenage boy at the cen­ter of Chris­t­ian Cooper’s It’s a Bird, the first entry in DC Comics’ dig­i­tal-first anthol­o­gy series Rep­re­sent!, is a bird­watch­er, like the author.

And the binoc­u­lars that were a 50th birth­day gift from Cooper’s father, a Kore­an War vet and Civ­il Rights activist, serve as mod­els for the ones Jules is none too thrilled to receive, despite his grandpa’s belief that they pos­sess spe­cial pow­ers.

Coop­er, who was was Mar­vel’s first open­ly gay writer and edi­tor, intro­duc­ing a num­ber of queer char­ac­ters before devot­ing him­self to sci­ence writ­ing, also draws on recent per­son­al his­to­ry that is more fraught.

Although the loca­tion has shift­ed from New York City’s Cen­tral Park to a sub­ur­ban green space bor­dered with large, well-kept homes, includ­ing Jules’, the young man’s encounter with an indig­nant white woman and her off-leash dog should ring any num­ber of bells.

In late May, Coop­er became the sub­ject of nation­al news, when he con­front­ed Amy Coop­er (no rela­tion) over her vio­la­tion of park rules, tired of the hav­oc uncon­trolled dogs wreak on birds who call the park home. Ms. Coop­er esca­lat­ed things quick­ly by call­ing 911, claim­ing she was being threat­ened by an African-Amer­i­can man. Coop­er record­ed the inci­dent as a mat­ter of pro­to­col, and his sis­ter shared the video on social media lat­er that day.

The same day that George Floyd was killed by police in Min­neapo­lis, Min­neso­ta.

What Jules sees through the lens­es of his grand­fa­ther’s binoc­u­lars con­tains an ele­ment of fan­ta­sy, but is also deeply root­ed in reality—the faces of Ami­dou Dial­lo, Bre­on­na Tay­lor, Floyd, and oth­er Black peo­ple who have died as a result of exces­sive, unwar­rant­ed police force.

When DC first approached him about tap­ping his expe­ri­ence for his first com­ic in over two decades, Coop­er was reluc­tant:

I thought, “I don’t know, DC Comics? Super­heroes? Not sure how that’s going to work.” We kicked around a cou­ple of ideas. They said they had got­ten the title, I’m not sure exact­ly from who, but some­body pret­ty high up in the DC food chain: “It’s a Bird.” It took me half a beat. “Oh…I get what you did there.” Once I had the title, the sto­ry wrote itself.

It’s a Bird artist Aletha E. Mar­tinez, a pio­neer whose 20-year career has includ­ed ink­ing such super­hero heavy hit­ters as the Black Pan­ther, Iron Man, Bat­girl, and X‑Men, also pulled from per­son­al expe­ri­ence when ren­der­ing Jules’ expres­sion after the binoc­u­lars reveal the cir­cum­stances of George Floyd’s death:

I saw that look on my son’s face three years ago after we left North Car­oli­na, and we were com­ing home to New York. We were stopped going into the air­port. We trav­el so often—cons, in and out of the coun­try. These two secu­ri­ty guards start­ed to harass us. They want­ed to take my purse. “Where are you from?” You hear my voice, there’s no accent in my voice. It end­ed up with them say­ing, “You should trav­el with your pass­port.” This is after back­ing us up in the cor­ner, and why? I’m an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen born on this soil, so is my son. I don’t need a pass­port to trav­el with­in my coun­try. This is our day and age.

I watched my son’s face change, and he nev­er quite walked up again look­ing hap­py going to the air­port. Now he has on armor. That face you see? That’s my kid.

It’s a Bird can be read for free on par­tic­i­pat­ing dig­i­tal plat­forms (see links below), and Coop­er is hope­ful that it will inspire young peo­ple to find out more about some of the real life char­ac­ters Jules spies through his binoc­u­lars. To that end, an appen­dix touch­es on some bio­graph­i­cal details:

We not only give the bare bones details of how they died, but also a lit­tle bit about them, because they were peo­ple. They weren’t just want hap­pened to them. I hope young peo­ple (are) inspired to keep the focus where it needs to be, which is on those we have lost and how we keep from los­ing more. There are peo­ple who are invest­ed in dis­tract­ing us right now, and there are peo­ple who want to dis­tract us from their fail­ures on so many oth­er things. That’s not what this moment is about. This moment is about the ones we’ve lost, and how we’re going to keep from los­ing any more. And if you’re not talk­ing about that, I don’t want to hear it.

Read Rep­re­sent!: It’s a Bird for free on readdc.com, Comixol­o­gy, Ama­zon Kin­dle, Apple Books, and oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing dig­i­tal plat­forms.

Read an inter­view with Coop­er and Mar­tinez, from which the quotes in this post are drawn, on DC’s blog.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A New Dig­i­tal Archive Pre­serves Black Lives Mat­ter & COVID-19 Street Art

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Bat­man Stars in an Unusu­al Car­toon Adap­ta­tion of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch an Epic Drum Battle, Pitting a 9‑Year-Old Girl Against Foo Fighter Dave Grohl

in K-12, Music | September 7th, 2020

Foo Fight­er Dave Grohl, for­mer­ly of Nir­vana, and Nan­di Bushell, an Ipswich ele­men­tary school­er, have some­thing in com­mon besides their incred­i­ble com­mand of the drums.

By all appear­ances, both seem to have ben­e­fit­ed from being reared by ground­ed, encour­ag­ing par­ents.

Nan­di, at 10, like­ly has a few more years under her folks’ roof despite her grow­ing renown—she’s jammed with Lenny Kravitz, gone viral in last year’s Argos Christ­mas advert, and most recent­ly, matched Grohl beat for beat in an epic drum bat­tle, above.

Nan­di demon­strat­ed a nat­ur­al rhyth­mic ear at an ear­ly age, bob­bing along to the Tele­tub­bies while still in dia­pers.

Of course, every­thing she’s achieved thus far can be con­sid­ered to have occurred at an ear­ly age.

On the oth­er hand, it was half a life­time ago when her father, a soft­ware engi­neer and self-described “mas­sive music fan” intro­duced the then-5-year-old to “Hey, Jude,” as part of a week­ly tra­di­tion where­in he makes pan­cakes with his chil­dren while shar­ing YouTube links to favorite songs.

She was imme­di­ate­ly tak­en with Ringo Starr, and the joy he exud­ed behind his kit.

Short­ly there­after, she passed a math exam, earn­ing a trip to Toys “R” Us to pick out a promised treat. Her eye went imme­di­ate­ly to a £25 kid­die drum set.

The plas­tic toy was a far cry from the pro­fes­sion­al kit she uses today, but she’s shown her­self to be adapt­able in a recent series of video tuto­ri­als for Daniel Bedingfield’s “Gonna Get Through This,” encour­ag­ing view­ers who lack equip­ment to bang on whatever’s handy—colanders, pot lids, bis­cuit tins… She rec­om­mends kebab skew­ers tipped with cel­lo­phane tape for the stick­less.

Her YouTube chan­nel def­i­nite­ly reveals a pref­er­ence for hard rock.

Her father, John, dis­likes play­ing pub­licly, but occa­sion­al­ly accom­pa­nies her on gui­tar, hop­ing she’ll grow accus­tomed to play­ing with oth­er peo­ple.

Doc­u­ment­ing his daughter’s per­for­mances lies more with­in his com­fort zone as he told Drum Talk TV in a very glitchy, ear­ly-pan­dem­ic vir­tu­al inter­view. Asked by host Dan Shin­der to share tips for oth­er par­ents of young drum­mers, par­tic­u­lar­ly girls, he coun­sels expos­ing them to as many musi­cal gen­res as pos­si­ble, nur­tur­ing their desire to play, and resolv­ing to have as much fun as pos­si­ble.

It’s clear that Nan­di is hav­ing a ball twirling her sticks and whal­ing on the drum part of Foo Fight­ers’ hit “Ever­long,” in a video uploaded last month.

Grohl got wind of the video and the chal­lenge con­tained there­in.

He took the bait, respond­ing with an “epic” video of his own, play­ing a set of drums bor­rowed from his 11-year-old daugh­ter:

I haven’t played that song since the day I record­ed it in 1997, but Nan­di, in the last week I’ve got­ten at least 100 texts from peo­ple all over the world say­ing ‘This girl is chal­leng­ing you to a drum-off, what are you going to do?’

Look, I’ve seen all your videos. I’ve seen you on TV. You’re an incred­i­ble drum­mer. I’m real­ly flat­tered that you picked some of my songs… and you’ve done them all per­fect­ly. So today, I’m gonna give you some­thing you may not have heard before. This is a song called “Dead End Friends” from a band called Them Crooked Vul­tures… now the ball is in your court.

(Fast for­ward to the final thir­ty sec­onds if you want to see the ulti­mate in hap­py dances.)

The young chal­lenger calls upon the rock Gods of old—Bon­zo, Bak­er, Peart, Moon—to back her side for “THE GREATEST ROCK BATTLE IN THE HISTORY OF ROCK!!!”

(In addi­tion to drum lessons, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Ipswich Rock Project and  junior jam ses­sions, it looks like her act­ing class­es at Stage­coach Per­form­ing Arts Ipswich are so pay­ing off.)

Five days after Grohl threw down his gaunt­let, she’s back on her drum throne, clad in a pre­teen ver­sion of Grohl’s buf­fa­lo check shirt and black pants, her snare bear­ing the leg­end “Grohl rocks.”

That sen­ti­ment would sure­ly please Grohl’s moth­er, Vir­ginia, author of From Cra­dle to Stage: Sto­ries from the Moth­ers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars.

A born enter­tain­er in his mother’s opin­ion, Grohl didn’t take up music until he was around the age Nan­di is now, after which it monop­o­lized his focus and ener­gy, lead­ing to a dis­as­trous 6th grade report card.

Rather than freak­ing out about gen­er­al edu­ca­tion dips, Vir­ginia, a pub­lic school teacher, was sup­port­ive when the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose for him to tour Europe at 17 with the Wash­ing­ton, DC band Scream after the depar­ture of drum­mer Kent Stax.

Wise move. Her son may be a high school drop-out, but he’s using his fame to shine a spot­light on the con­cerns of teach­ers, who are essen­tial work­ers in his view. Check out his essay in The Atlantic, in which he writes that he wouldn’t trust the U.S. Sec­re­tary of Per­cus­sion to tell him how to play “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” if they had nev­er sat behind a drum set:

It takes a cer­tain kind of per­son to devote their life to this dif­fi­cult and often-thank­less job. I know because I was raised in a com­mu­ni­ty of them. I have mowed their lawns, paint­ed their apart­ments, even babysat their chil­dren, and I’m con­vinced that they are as essen­tial as any oth­er essen­tial work­ers. Some even raise rock stars! Tom Morel­lo of Rage Against the Machine, Adam Levine, Josh Groban, and Haim are all chil­dren of school work­ers (with hope­ful­ly more aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly reward­ing results than mine).

He’s also leav­ing time in his sched­ule for anoth­er drum bat­tle:

Watch more of Nan­di Bushell’s drum and gui­tar cov­ers on her par­ent-mon­i­tored YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fun­da­men­tals of Jazz & Rock Drum­ming Explained in Five Cre­ative Min­utes

The Case for Why Ringo Starr Is One of Rock’s Great­est Drum­mers

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Free Stanford Course on How to Teach Online: Watch the Lectures Online

in Education, K-12, Stanford | July 26th, 2020

Ear­li­er this month, Stan­ford’s Online High School offered (in part­ner­ship with Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies) a free, five-day course “Teach Your Class Online: The Essen­tials.” With many schools start­ing the next aca­d­e­m­ic year online, this course found a large audi­ence. 7,000 teach­ers signed up. Aimed at mid­dle and high school teach­ers, the course cov­ered “gen­er­al guide­lines for adapt­ing your course to an online for­mat, best prac­tices for var­ied sit­u­a­tions, com­mon pit­falls in online course design, and how to trou­bleshoot stu­dent issues online.”

The videos from “Teach Your Class Online: The Essen­tials” are all now avail­able online. You can watch them in sequen­tial order, mov­ing from top to bot­tom, here. Or watch them on this Stan­ford host­ed page. Day 1 (above) pro­vides a gen­er­al intro­duc­tion to teach­ing online. See top­ics cov­ered in Days 2–5 below.

Please feel free to share these videos with any teach­ers. And if any­one watch­es these lec­tures and takes good class notes (ones oth­er teach­ers can use), please let us know. We would be hap­py to help share them with oth­er teach­ers.

Final­ly, just to give you a lit­tle back­ground, Stan­ford’s Online High School has oper­at­ed as a ful­ly-online, inde­pen­dent, accred­it­ed high school since 2006. Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­vides open enroll­ment cours­es to adults world­wide. All of its cours­es are cur­rent­ly online. For any­one inter­est­ed, Cours­era also offers a spe­cial­iza­tion (a series of five cours­es) on online learn­ing called the Vir­tu­al Teacher. It can be explored here.

 

Day 2

  • Get­ting Spe­cif­ic: Sit­u­a­tions and Tools
  • Sci­ence: Labs in Online Ped­a­gogy

 

Day 3

  • Online Class­room Exam­ple Clips
  • Build­ing and Main­tain­ing a Class­room
    Com­mu­ni­ty

 

Day 4

  • Review of Sub­mit­ted Sam­ple Les­son Drafts
  • Trou­bleshoot­ing Obsta­cles to Suc­cess in the Online Envi­ron­ment

 

Day 5

  • Math: Using Writ­ing Tablets and White­boards
  • Mod­ern Lan­guages: Tips for High­ly Inter­ac­tive Class Dur­ing Which Stu­dents Active­ly Speak and Write in the Tar­get Lan­guage
  • Human­i­ties: Pro­duc­tive Class­room Con­ver­sa­tions About Chal­leng­ing Sub­jects
  • Clos­ing Thoughts

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

How Schools Can Start Teach­ing Online in a Short Peri­od of Time: Free Tuto­ri­als from the Stan­ford Online High School

“I Will Sur­vive,” the Coro­n­avirus Ver­sion for Teach­ers Going Online

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Behold Octavia Butler’s Motivational Notes to Self

in Books, K-12, Literature, Writing | June 29th, 2020

Hand­writ­ten notes on the inside cov­er of one of Octavia E. Butler’s com­mon­place books, 1988

I was attract­ed to sci­ence fic­tion because it was so wide open. I was able to do any­thing and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human con­di­tion that you were stopped from exam­in­ing. —Octavia E. But­ler

Like many authors, the late Octavia E. But­ler took up writ­ing at a young age.

At 11, she was churn­ing out tales about hors­es and romance.

At 12, she saw Dev­il Girl from Mars, and fig­ured (cor­rect­ly) she could tell a bet­ter sto­ry than that, using 2 fin­gers to peck out sto­ries on the Rem­ing­ton type­writer her moth­er bought at her request.

At 13, she found a copy of The Writer mag­a­zine aban­doned on a bus seat, and learned that it was pos­si­ble to sub­mit her work for pub­li­ca­tion.

After a decade’s worth of rejec­tion slips, she sold her first two sto­ries, thanks in part to her asso­ci­a­tion with the Clar­i­on Sci­ence Fic­tion Writ­ing Work­shop, which she became involved with on the rec­om­men­da­tion of her men­tor, sci­ence fic­tion writer Har­lan Elli­son.

She went on to become the first sci­ence fic­tion writer to receive a pres­ti­gious MacArthur “genius” award, gar­ner­ing mul­ti­ple Hugo and Neb­u­la awards for her work.

An aster­oid is named after her, as is a moun­tain on Pluto’s moon.

Hailed as the Moth­er of Afro Futur­ism, she won the PEN Amer­i­can Cen­ter life­time achieve­ment award in writ­ing.

But pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess nev­er cloud­ed her view of her­self as the 10-year-old writer who was unsure if library-lov­ing black kids like her would be allowed inside a book­store.

Iden­ti­fy­ing as a writer helped her move beyond her crip­pling shy­ness and dyslex­ia. As she wrote in an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal essay, “Pos­i­tive Obses­sion”:

I believed I was ugly and stu­pid, clum­sy, and social­ly hope­less. I also thought that every­one would notice these faults if I drew atten­tion to myself. I want­ed to dis­ap­pear. Instead, I grew to be six feet tall. Boys in par­tic­u­lar seemed to assume that I had done this grow­ing delib­er­ate­ly and that I should be ridiculed for it as often as pos­si­ble.

I hid out in a big pink notebook—one that would hold a whole ream of paper. I made myself a uni­verse in it. There I could be a mag­ic horse, a Mar­t­ian, a telepath….There I could be any­where but here, any time but now, with any peo­ple but these.

She devel­oped a life­long habit of cheer­ing her­self on with moti­va­tion­al notes, writ­ing them in her jour­nals, on lined note­book paper, in day plan­ners and on repur­posed pages of an old wall cal­en­dar.

She held her­self account­able by writ­ing out demand­ing sched­ules to accom­pa­ny her lofty, doc­u­ment­ed goals.

And though she wea­ried of the con­stant invi­ta­tions to serve on lit­er­ary pan­els devot­ed to sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers of col­or, at which she’d be asked the same ques­tions she’d answered dozens of times before, she was res­olute about pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for young black writ­ers … and read­ers, who found reflec­tions of them­selves in her char­ac­ters. As she remarked in an inter­view with The New York Times: 

When I began writ­ing sci­ence fic­tion, when I began read­ing, heck, I wasn’t in any of this stuff I read. The only black peo­ple you found were occa­sion­al char­ac­ters or char­ac­ters who were so fee­ble-wit­ted that they couldn’t man­age any­thing, any­way. I wrote myself in, since I’m me and I’m here and I’m writ­ing.

Her brand of sci­ence fic­tion—a label she often tried to duck, iden­ti­fy­ing her­self on her busi­ness card sim­ply as “writer”—serves as a lens for con­sid­er­ing con­tem­po­rary issues: sex­u­al vio­lence, gun vio­lence, cli­mate change, gen­der stereo­types, the prob­lems of late-stage cap­i­tal­ism, the plight of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, and, not least, racism.

She side­stepped utopi­an sci­ence fic­tion, believ­ing that imper­fect humans are inca­pable of  form­ing a per­fect soci­ety. “Nobody is per­fect,” she told Vibe:

One of the things I’ve dis­cov­ered even with teach­ers using my books is that peo­ple tend to look for ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys,’ which always annoys the hell out of me. I’d be bored to death writ­ing that way. But because that’s the only pat­tern they have, they try to fit my work into it.

Learn more about the life and work of Octavia E. But­ler (1947–2006) here.

I shall be a best­selling writer. After Ima­go, each of my books will be on the best­seller lists of LAT, NYT, PW, WP, etc. My nov­els will go onto the above lists whether pub­lish­ers push them hard or not, whether I’m paid a high advance or not, whether I ever win anoth­er award or not.

This is my life. I write best­selling nov­els. My nov­els go onto the best­seller lists on or short­ly after pub­li­ca­tion. My nov­els each trav­el up to the top of the best­seller lists and they reach the top and they stay on top for months . Each of my nov­els does this.

So be it! I will find the way to do this. See to it! So be it! See to it!

My books will be read by mil­lions of peo­ple!

I will buy a beau­ti­ful home in an excel­lent neigh­bor­hood

I will send poor black young­sters to Clar­i­on or oth­er writer’s work­shops

I will help poor black young­sters broad­en their hori­zons

I will help poor black young­sters go to col­lege

I will get the best of health care for my moth­er and myself

I will hire a car when­ev­er I want or need to.

I will trav­el when­ev­er and wher­ev­er in the world that I choose

My books will be read by mil­lions of peo­ple!

So be it! See to it!

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Should We Read Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Writer Octavia But­ler? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Octavia Butler’s 1998 Dystopi­an Nov­el Fea­tures a Fascis­tic Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date Who Promis­es to “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again”

Watch a 5‑Part Ani­mat­ed Primer on Afro­fu­tur­ism, the Black Sci-Fi Phe­nom­e­non Inspired by Sun Ra

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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Explore 1,100 Works of Art by Georgia O’Keeffe: They’re Now Digitized and Free to View Online

in Art, K-12 | June 26th, 2020

Lake George Reflec­tion (cir­ca 1921) via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

What comes to mind when you think of Geor­gia O’Keeffe?

Bleached skulls in the desert?

Aer­i­al views of clouds, almost car­toon­ish in their puffi­ness?

Volup­tuous flow­ers (freight­ed with an erot­ic charge the artist may not have intend­ed)?

Prob­a­bly not Polaroid prints of a dark haired pet chow sprawled on flag­stones…

Or water­col­or sketch­es of demure­ly pret­ty ladies…

Or a mas­sive cast iron abstrac­tion…

If your knowl­edge of America’s most cel­e­brat­ed female artists is con­fined to the gift shop’s great­est hits, you might enjoy a leisure­ly prowl through the 1100+ works in the Geor­gia O’Keeffe Museum’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion.

A main objec­tive of this beta release is to pro­vide a more com­plete under­stand­ing of the life and work of the icon­ic artist, who died in 1986 at the age of 98.

Her evo­lu­tion is evi­dent when you search by mate­ri­als or date.

You can also view works by oth­er artists in the col­lec­tion, includ­ing two very sig­nif­i­cant men in her life, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Alfred Stieglitz and ceram­i­cist Juan Hamil­ton.

Each item’s list­ing is enhanced with infor­ma­tion on inscrip­tions and exhi­bi­tions, as well as links to oth­er works pro­duced in the same year.

If your explo­rations leave you in a cre­ative mood, the museum’s web­site has devised a host of  O’Keeffe-inspired, all-ages cre­ative assign­ments, such as an adver­tis­ing chal­lenge stem­ming from her 1939 trip to Hawaii to design pro­mo­tion­al images for the Hawai­ian Pineap­ple Com­pa­ny (now known as Dole).

Vis­it the Geor­gia O’Keeffe Museum’s online col­lec­tion here. And watch a doc­u­men­tary intro­duc­tion to O’Ke­ef­fee, nar­rat­ed by Gene Hack­man, below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Real Geor­gia O’Keeffe: The Artist Reveals Her­self in Vin­tage Doc­u­men­tary Clips

Geor­gia O’Keeffe: A Life in Art, a Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Painter Nar­rat­ed by Gene Hack­man

How Geor­gia O’Keeffe Became Geor­gia O’Keeffe: An Ani­mat­ed Video Tells the Sto­ry

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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Construct Your Own Bayeux Tapestry with This Free Online App

in Art, Design, History, K-12 | June 19th, 2020

A wise woman once quoth that one man’s adult col­or­ing book is another’s Medieval Tapes­try Edit.

If tak­ing crayons to emp­ty out­lines of man­dalas, flo­ral pat­terns, and for­est and ocean scenes has failed to calm your mind, the His­toric Tale Con­struc­tion Kit may cure what ails you.

Pro­gram­mers Leonard Allain-Lau­nay and Math­ieu Thoret­ton and soft­ware engi­neer Maria Cos­mi­na Ete­gan cre­at­ed the online kit as a trib­ute to a late, great, ear­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry appli­ca­tion designed by Acad­e­my of Media Arts Cologne stu­dents Björn Karnebo­gen and Gerd Jung­bluth.

They sep­a­rat­ed out var­i­ous ele­ments of the Bayeux Tapes­try, allow­ing you to freely mess around with 1000-year-old images of war­riors, com­mon­ers, beasts, and build­ings:

Craft thy own Bayeux Tapes­try

Slay mis­chie­vous beasts

Rule the king­dom

Rotate, resize, clone…

Choose a back­ground, add some text in your choice of Bayeux or Augus­ta font and you’ll have done your bit to revive the fad­ing art of the Medieval Macro (or meme.)

The orig­i­nal tapes­try used some 224 feet of wool-embroi­dered linen to recount the Bat­tle of Hast­ings and the events lead­ing up to it.

You need not have such lofty aims.

Per­haps test the waters with a Father’s Day greet­ing, resiz­ing and rotat­ing until you feel ready to export as a PNG.

The inter­face is extreme­ly user friend­ly, kind of like a tech-savvy 11th-cen­tu­ry cousin of the online drag-and-drop graph­ic design tool, Can­va.

The His­toric Tale Con­struc­tion Kit’s most impres­sive bells and whis­tles reside in the paint­brush tool in the low­er left cor­ner, which allows you to lay down great swaths of folks, birds, or corpses in a sin­gle sweep.

Your palette will be lim­it­ed to the shades deployed by the Bayeux embroi­der­ers, who obtained their col­ors from plants—dyer’s woad, mad­der, and dyer’s rock­et (or weld).

The text, of course, is entire­ly up to you.

It pleased us to go with the emi­nent­ly quotable David Bowie, and only after we groped our way into the three fledg­ling efforts you see above did we dis­cov­er that we’re not the only ones.

Pre­sent­ing Ear­ly Pre-Bowie Ref­er­ences to “Space Odd­i­ty”


Throw on some Bard­core and begin rework­ing the Bayeux Tapes­try with the His­toric Tale Con­struc­tion Kit here.

If you are inter­est­ed in some­thing a bit more tech­ni­cal, the design­ers have put the open­source code on GitHub for your cus­tomiz­ing plea­sure.

The Bayeux Tapes­try has also been recent­ly dig­i­tized. Explore it here: The Bayeux Tapes­try Gets Dig­i­tized: View the Medieval Tapes­try in High Res­o­lu­tion, Down to the Indi­vid­ual Thread

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Medieval Cov­ers of “Creep,” “Pumped Up Kicks,” “Bad Romance” & More by Hilde­gard von Blin­gin’

160,000 Pages of Glo­ri­ous Medieval Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized: Vis­it the Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Studio Ghibli Producer Toshio Suzuki Teaches You How to Draw Totoro in Two Minutes

in Animation, Art, Film, K-12 | May 22nd, 2020

This is some­thing you can do at home. Every­one, please draw pic­tures —Toshio Suzu­ki

There’s no short­age of online tuto­ri­als for fans who want to draw Totoro, the  enig­mat­ic title char­ac­ter of Stu­dio Ghibli’s 1988 ani­mat­ed fea­ture, My Neigh­bor Totoro:

There’s a two-minute, non-nar­rat­ed, God’s-Eye-view with shad­ing…

A detailed geom­e­try-based step-by-step…

A ten-minute ver­sion for kids that uti­lizes a drink­ing glass and a bot­tle cap to get the pro­por­tions right pri­or to pen­cil­ing, ink­ing, and col­or­ing…

But none has more heart than Stu­dio Ghi­b­li pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki’s sim­ple demon­stra­tion, above.

The paper is ori­ent­ed toward the artist, rather than the view­er.

His only instruc­tion is that the eyes should be spaced very far apart.

His brush pen lends itself to a freer line than the tight­ly con­trolled out­lines of Stu­dio Ghibli’s care­ful­ly ren­dered 2‑D char­ac­ter designs.

This is Totoro as Zen prac­tice, offered as a gift to cooped-up Japan­ese chil­dren, whose schools, like so many world­wide, were abrupt­ly shut­tered in an effort to con­tain the spread of the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Free Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings: Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away & More

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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