The social network propagates creativity myths

The Washington Post (click here) recently slammed the movie "The Social Network" for its inaccuracies.  The WP criticizee the film's characterization of Zuckerberg as a loner and Saverin's innocence in his ejection from the company.  The focus of the review, however, is on the inaccuracies of Facebook as an idea.  In the film, Zuckerberg experiences a series of eureka moments that result in the Facebook we know today.  Even though these sparks are socially derived, WP is unhappy that the collaborative nature of innovation is ignored as Zuckerberg is portrayed as an individual creator.

Our concepts of creativity are socially constructed. Americans have held romantic notions of creativity, believing that artists and scientists are uniquely gifted to experience more and better "ah ha" moments than the rest of us.  Our intellectual property system is based on this view of creatives. We can see our concept of creativity changing as a mainstream media, like WP, breaks down our creativity myths.  The article even offers a quote from leading researchers: "The idea of the lone genius who has the eureka moment where they suddenly get a great idea that changes the world is not just the exception," says Steven Johnson, author of "Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation," "but almost nonexistent."

The article then calls for a change in the education, intellectual property and tax systems to spur creativity. If we continue to study creativity in a rigorous way, we will not be as susceptible to concepts of creativity that lead us down the wrong policy paths.  On a side note - I really liked the movie.

Meg Ambrose is a second year doctoral student in the ATLAS Technology, Media, and Society Ph.D. program. She is researching the impact privacy and intellectual property laws have on creativity and innovation.

Save the dates!

Dangerously Safe
August 27-29: Award-winning actresses Gemma Wilcox and Elizabeth Baron dive into the the raw play of separation and connection in an edgy blend of improv, dance, myth and video–part of the Boulder International Fringe Festival.
Two shows on each of three evenings: 6 and 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 27 6 and 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 28 5 and 7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 29
Tickets: $15 general public, $13 students and seniors. For details & tickets, visit http://tiny.cc/y7yoj or http://boulderfringe.com/.

Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema
Sept. 10-11: See a niche film festival of dance cinema and live performance. For tickets and details, visit SansSouciFest.org.
• 7:30 p.m. Friday & Saturday, Sept. 10 & 11 Two different programs of dance cinema with live performance. Free to students.
• 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 11 Free dance/media panel discussion
• 1 p.m.–6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 11 Free documentary and art screenings; for schedule details, visit SansSouciFest.org.

Disappear Here
Sept. 17-18, 24-25: Two dance companies–Sweet Edge and Syzygy Butoh–cross genres, blending video and movement. Explore the wilderness within and without, the seen, unseen, and the world’s ephemeral beauty.
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Sept. 17-18 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Sept. 24-25 Tickets: $20 general public, $15 students and seniors. For ticket reservations and information, visit http://atlas.colorado.edu/atlas/disappearhere.

Stockhausen 2010 Festival
Sept. 30, Oct. 1 and Oct. 3
• 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 30 Free lecture and open discussion on the eclectic, visionary music of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007).
• 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 1 Free concert: electronic and instrumental music of composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and Helmut Lachenmann.
• 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 3 Free demonstration of the eight-channel, 24 speaker surround-sound system that was featured at the Stockhausen Festival in Germany.
• 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 3 Free concert: electronic and instrumental music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, including composer’s last masterpiece, Cosmic Pulses. Tickets are free, reservations recommended. Visit http://stockhausen2010.eventbrite.com for reservations and information.

reConstruction
Oct. 8, Friday, 7:30 p.m: “How do we create memory from almost nothing?” asks artist/composer Ryan Wurst. Using modified piano, video and found objects, Wurst creates a dream-like place where emotion is awakened.
Free tickets, reservations recommended. Visit http://reconstruction.eventbrite.com for reservations and information.

Poemedia
Oct. 22-23: Immerse yourself in an environment with live DJ/VJ performance pumping out sound, music and video projected on hanging paper covered with poetry.
Artists/poets Erin Costello and Aaron Angello ask, “What place does the printed word have in the distraction and noise of a media-saturated world?”
Free: 7 p.m. Friday & Saturday, Oct. 22-23
Note: Event has no seating. Audiences are encouraged to explore the environment.

Una
Nov. 18-19: Experience the fantasy journey of a young woman as she enters worlds of light and darkness–told through dance, theater, film, music and bold color. Free: 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 19 Seating is limited, reservations recommended. To reserve your seat or get information, visit http://una.eventbrite.com.

CU, TAM grad living a dream at Dreamworks

Jacob Melvin, a University of Colorado computer science and ATLAS Technology, Arts and Media (TAM) graduate, is living his dream -- as a technical director at DreamWorks Animation, where he has worked on animation projects such as "Kung Fu Panda" and "How to Train Your Dragon."
In his job, he coordinates the work of various animators, making sure that things go smoothly. He might even write some code to fix a problem.
Melvin worked hard to get where he is, but "I was never the ideal college student," he told a group of high school students participating in the ATLAS DigitalCUrrents three-week summer workshop. The DigitalCUrrents students are working on a documentary on the 100th anniversary of their school, North High School, in Denver.
And while Melvin's grades weren't the best, his interest in graphics, animation, gaming and programming produced impressive projects -- polished enough to attract the attention of Dreamworks during a National Society of Black Engineers’ career fair in 2007.
But he almost missed his big chance.
Melvin said he walked by a booth at the fair and got interested in reading a brochure about Shrek. While he was standing there reading, the man at the booth asked him some questions. After a while, Melvin said it finally dawned on him that the man was interviewing him. That chat led to more interviews with Dreamworks employees and a job offer within a week.
One of the projects Melvin showed Dreamworks was his senior computer science project, which involved designing software that could convert a picture of a person into comic book art.
Melvin said his project made a difference. "Not all majors require a project like that," he said, so he had an advantage over others competing for a Dreamworks job.
Melvin also encouraged the DigitalCUrrents students to seek internships, both for building a resume and finding out what they want to do. While at CU, Melvin had an internship making games for a software development company.
But "I learned I'd rather play them than make them," and that his true passion was in animation. That's where the TAM courses came in. TAM "got me to see how I could use computer science" for animation and graphics using software such as Flash. He also took community college courses on animation.
Melvin also participated in several CU programs, including a pre-college academic bootcamp called Summer Bridge; the Multicultural Engineering Program; and the National Society of Black Engineers, and he was able to obtain some scholarships. He also worked as a TA for a course.
He said he is very pleased he is able to work at a job where he loves what he does.
"When you love what you're doing, you never look at the clock," he said.

For more information about Melvin and his work, follow these links:

IEEE Spectrum: Dream Jobs 2010: Jacob Melvin
Daily Camera article: Behind-the-animation-scenes: CU grad inspires teenagers
The Black Scholars Index
How to Train Your Dragon Official Trailer
Kung Fu Panda

Bruce Henderson is director of communications at the ATLAS Institute. He worked as a newspaper reporter, photographer and editor for 20 years before becoming an associate professor of journalism at CU, where he taught journalism and new media publishing for a decade.

ATLAS students display their capstone projects

The creative works of students in the ATLAS capstone projects course were installed in the ATLAS building this month. Video versions of some of the projects are now posted on YouTube.
The capstone projects course includes a series of lectures, demonstrations, portfolio development, open lab sessions, meetings, critiques and a significant reading and writing component. Students explore issues and theory, then produce a final project depicting a specific theme. The projects can be in any medium and several used both physical and digital media.
The course is the final stage of the 21-credit ATLAS minor in Technology, Arts and Media. Like all ATLAS courses, students come from any major on campus. They bring a diversity of experiences, interests and knowledge in producing their capstone projects. (More information about the minor and courses available is at http://www.colorado.edu/atlas/newatlas/tam/courses.html)

Here are some examples of their work:

• "Color Portrait of the Late 18th and 20th Century Paris"
Kendal Anderson, a Film Studies/Studio Arts major, used a Flash-based animation to feature photographs and artwork portraying Paris in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
"The piece is meant to portray the feeling and the beauty of Paris primarily by way of color and abstraction," she writes. "My goal for this piece is to captivate the viewer and draw them into the experience of a specific place and time -- the colors and imagery become almost hallucinatory as one image morphs into another."
View the video by clicking here.

• "Digesting a Gust of Wind for Breakfast"
Danielle Larson, Advertising major, used strips of cloth draped over a canvas as a screen to project this video. The artwork depicts a form of "Techno-Stress."
"As a student of culture, I am addicted to technology. Yielding innovation, design and connectivity, technology has been an integral part of my daily routine," she writes. "However, technology is my highest source of anxiety, which I've dubbed 'Techno-Stress.' Trying to stay on top of endless programs, services and devices; mastering skills, unlocking shortcuts, gaining organic ease within an interface is always met with something newer, faster, better, different. It's exhausting.
"To me, artistic (specifically visual) innovation is intriguing and certainly more meaningful. However, to create progress in the artistic space, you must integrate new media, technology and creative methods. As I've experienced in this program, the distinction between technology, arts and media is becoming less and less tangible...
"I can't seem to truly get away from my devices. Finding a moment to just breathe has become unjustifiable. Rather, we wake to our e-mail ringing our phone, three new events added to our day's calendar, while digesting a gust of wind for breakfast on our way out the door."
View the video by clicking here.

• "NIKEvolution"
Brett Macartney, Advertising major, Technology, examines the Nike brand since 1964.
"Nike has become among the top in its category, not only for product quality, but also advertising campaigns. Some of the most memorable print ads, television spots and advertising slogans have been born from this brand.
"This project shows the road this brand has taken from the beginning, through all the advertising campaigns and to what it stands for today," Macartney writes.
View the video by clicking here.

• "My Life in Boulder, Colorado"
Molly Oliver, a Communications major depicts scenes in Boulder and the Rocky Mountain region with a series of visual animations and time-lapse video.
"The objective of my project was to include scenes from Colorado that are unique to my experience," Oliver writes.
"Over 10 hours of footage has been condensed into this three-minute depiction of life in Boulder, Colorado. This time-lapse video is a compilation of some of my favorite memories here at CU."
View the video by clicking here.

• "ICT4D: Making the Change in Underdeveloped Countries"
Koby O'Brien, an English literature major, examines how Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) can assist underdeveloped countries by providing tools and knowledge for development.
"ICT4D creates projects that provide struggling societies with technology, giving them more opportunities within the economy and a voice for change. Watch this video to find out more about what ICT4D projects can accomplish and the steps that need to be taken for them to succeed."
View the video by clicking here.

Bruce Henderson is director of communications at the ATLAS Institute. He worked as a newspaper reporter, photographer and editor for 20 years before becoming an associate professor of journalism at CU, where he taught journalism and new media publishing for a decade.

Communikey Festival presents workshops, performances, interactivity April 15-17 in ATLAS

The annual Communikey Festival of Electronic Arts comes to ATLAS Thursday-Saturday, April 15-17, with live performances, workshops and interactive projects. Events in ATLAS include:

Make A Baby
Workshops with Lucky Dragons, Thursday, April 15, ATLAS Black Box theater (Photo 4)

The experimental duo Lucky Dragons, consisting of Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara of Los Angeles, use homemade hardware and software to translate data generated by skin contact into visualizations and sound generated by the group interaction.
Only three workshop slots remain open: 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. Register for a workshop by e-mailing workshops@communikey.us.

Sharing Visual Ideas in Processing
Workshop with composer Peter Kirn, 2-4p.m. Friday, April 16, ATLAS Cofrin Auditorium

Using the free and open source Processing software, Peter Kirn, a faculty member at the Parsons New School for Design and a Ph.D. student at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, will introduce the basics of using code and will assign sonic and visual elements, and then will share an audiovisual sketchpad in a networked collaboration.

Sonic Chop Shop Workshop
Featuring D Numbers (Photo 3), noon-2 p.m. Friday, April 16, ATLAS Black Box theater

Audience members are encouraged to bring their own instruments, music loops, drum machines, sequencers, mixing boards and their voices to this music fusion workshop. D Numbers, a three-person group from Santa Fe, will blend the sounds into an electro-acoustic music experience.

DIY Headcase
Featuring White Rainbow (Photo 2) and Lucky Dragons, 7-9 p.m. Friday, April 16, ATLAS Black Box theater

Lucky Dragons and White Rainbow, a psychedelic, electronic, experimental music project of Adam Forkner of Portland, Ore., spotlight DIY craftsmanship and aesthetics in a live performance amplified in the high fidelity setting of the Black Box theater.
Tickets, which are $5 for students and $10 for non-students, can be purchased at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/105426.

Mutek A/Visions
Featuring Artificiel, using an audio-modulated Tesla coil (Photo 1) as a live instrument, 7-9 p.m. Saturday, April 17, ATLAS Black Box theater

Alexandre Burton, Julien Roy and Jimmy Lakatos make up Artificiel, a group based in Montreal, Canada. They will perform their latest project, POWEr, which uses an audio-modulated Tesla coil as a live instrument. Electrical arcs produced by the coil are generated and transformed in an ongoing, real-time audiovisual process. Also featuring Xavier van Wersch from The Hague Tickets for the event are $20 and can be purchased at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/105342.

Looking at the iPad and a portal to the future

The new Apple iPad is making me think deeply about how news and entertainment are consumed. That's a bit of a leap for me, because my professional life has involved using computers to create all types of content, from news to still photos to audio and video and interactive content.

Creating versus consuming. The iPad is a device for consuming all types of media. Not by accident, it also provides a pretty easy way to spend money, to buy things, to help satisfy the myriad appetites of all types of consumers.

There's that word again. Consume.

So I've been getting in touch with my consuming side since I picked up the iPad at its debut on Saturday (although I am using the iPad to write this blog and am very pleased with how my typing speed and accuracy are improving).

Time magazine, USA Today (which is only free until July), New York Times Editor's Choice, BBC News, ABC (on-demand choices for just about any fairly recent ABC TV show), NPR, Pandora, YouTube, iTunes, various publication Web sites, books. All of these display beautifully and quickly on the iPad. My favorite for design, graphics, lots of photos and some video is Time magazine. It's just gorgeous. And I can't wait for Wired magazine (see
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/the-wired-ipad-app-a-video-demonstration/)

First-day sales of the iPad were around 300,000, application downloads topped a million and about 250,000 e-books were sold, according to Apple. Worldwide iPad sales estimates for the year range from 2.5 million to 7.1 million, according to the Wall Street Journal (see article here).

Seton Hill University will give every full-time student an iPad starting in the fall (http://www.setonhill.edu/iPad). Locally, Alexandar Dawson School, a private K-12 prep school in Lafayette, will provide iPads for all fifth and sixth graders and is building a curriculum to complement the device (http://www.dawsonschool.org).

The iPad looks very much like the tablet computer envisioned by Roger Fidler in the early 1990s. Fidler operated the Information Design Lab from 1992-1995 in Boulder. He prototyped an electronic tablet newspaper and peered into the future of electronic publications. (For a story about the iPad, the lab and to see the lab's original video about the tablet, click here. For a look at what Fidler currently is doing and his review of the iPad, click here.

Ironically, Knight Ridder, the newspaper chain that funded his research lab and at that time owned some 30 newspapers (including the local Daily Camera where I was working at the time), is no longer in business. Newspapers -- and journalism -- are endangered financially in the current electronic era.

Can the iPad make a difference?

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado is hosting a lab that is investigating the future of news in the digital age. It's called the Digital Media Test Kitchen. The effort is being led by Steve Outing, who is well-known in the online media community through his Editor & Publisher Online column called "Stop the Presses.”

The mission of the lab is to take "a cross-disciplinary approach to addressing the market failure in public-interest journalism by testing, advancing and developing new technologies, techniques and business models to reinvigorate and reinvent the news industry as it navigates through a turbulent transition period."

The Test Kitchen invites participation in a number of areas, including research, testing and adaptation of digital/news media, student projects and financial support.

More information about the Digital Media Test Kitchen is at http://test kitchen.colorado.edu.



Bruce Henderson is director of communications at the ATLAS Institute. He worked as a newspaper reporter, photographer and editor for 20 years before becoming an associate professor of journalism at CU, where he taught journalism and new media publishing for a decade.

Sound artists Ross Hagen and Jim Permanent present unique mixes of technology, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 10, ATLAS Black Box

"This is my first full-on, immersive, surround-
sound show; I'm pretty pumped about it!"
--Composer/sound artist/performer Ross Hagen

CU College of Music instructor, doctoral student, composer and sound artist Ross Hagen will perform his original works in a surround-sound concert.
Using a combination of acoustic instruments with analog synthesizers, hardware effects units and manipulated field recordings, his sounds will provide audience members with a unique, immersive acoustic experience.
Hagen, under the name "encomiast," has released nine full-length collections on various labels since 1999. One project was featured on a variety of compilations, incorporated into film music and performed live.
A reviewer commented on one of Hagen's works:
". . . [his work] is downright frightening, all creaking moaning low end, deep ominous rumbles, all manner of tiny sounds drifting up out of the inky blackness, cold and sinister, abstract and ephemeral, the overtones drifting like lost specters, voices moan and bellow, the natural room sound [is] as much an instrument as anything else.
"These deep dark drones totally evoke the spirit of that haunted space. . . submerge yourself in these seemingly bottomless sounds." Learn more about Ross Hagen's sound art and his pseudonym encomiast.


Jim Permanent, "turntapelist,"
presents his sound art
Jim Campbell (aka Jim Permanent) calls himself a "turntapelist, for lack of a better word." Inspired by proponents of experimental work with vinyl, both avant-garde and hip-hop, he started to experiment with low-fidelity electronics, primarily relics of the tape age.
Over time, he moved beyond his drum kit and put together a new instrument, a "cassette scratch orchestra," composed of cast-off phrase trainers, self-made scratchbunnies, dictaphone, an analog cassette multitracker and piles of found and self-dubbed tapes.
Campbell works in a variety of contexts, improvising freely, scratching abstract-emotive tone poems on the fly. In addition to composing for theater and dance, he curates the innovative "baender bender" concert series in Dortmund, Germany. Also, he has collaborated with a diverse range of musicians. See his videos and hear his music and sound art.


Tickets are free. Seating is limited.
Reservations are recommended.

Reserve your seats now:
http://atlas.eventbrite.com/

Listen to sound artist Ross Hagen’s work
(under his pseudonym, “ecomniast”)
http://www.myspace.com/encomiast

See sound artist Jim Permanent’s videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/jimpermanent