Franklin Osuagwu’s timeline as Lab Coordinator at the
ArtSciLab.
Franklin Osuagwu started working at the ArtSciLab in June
2019. After the exit of Kyle, he came in as the new Lab Coordinator. While
working at the lab, his major duties were organizing the MOWG meetings,
organizing the weekly watering hole events, and finally creating a
cybersecurity plan for the Lab. As he steps ahead in his career path moving
forward, he conducts a final interview with Alex Topete on his experience and
next moves.
What was his first Introduction to the ArtSciLab?
Franklin initially had no prior knowledge about the Lab.
Being an electrical engineering major, he had no information about activities
going on in ATEC, least of all, the Watering Hole. He found about the lab
through the lab coordinator job posting on Handshake last summer.
How did Franklin rate his experience at the ArtSciLab?
Franklin loved his time at the ArtSciLab. He always found a
chance to speak about how Roger and the rest of his coworkers were. He was able
to make new valuable and professional connections. One thing he mentioned he
loved mostly the lab was that it also served as his new “chilling spot” in
between his classes.
Is there any new skill that Franklin picked up through
his experience?
Franklin indicated that his management skills were on an all
time high. His constant interaction with people in the lab helped him know how
to manage and deal with people in an ideal work environment.
Difficulties while working at the Lab?
Franklin mentioned that one of his major issues was
communication. In terms of people responding to emails on timely manner. He
further mentioned that he would have loved a better attendance of lab events by
its members, more especially the Watering Hole held weekly.
Where is he heading next?
Franklin is currently working as an IT intern at Epsilon.
His internship is expected to run from January till December when he graduates.
He will still maintain relationships with the Lab, serving as a Lab ambassador.
His final note his former teammates and coworkers are “Be
sure to catch me at future watering holes.”
February 2020, the University of Texas at Dallas ArtSciLab appoints Jacob Hunwick as Lab Ambassador for the duration of his study abroad program in Germany. He starts at Phillips University Marburg on February the 18th and finishes on June the 12th. In addition, lab director Roger Malina appoints Jacob as an intern representative for the Leonardo Journal in Europe.
Jacob will work to research, discover and document exemplars of art-science and well-being. Through his studies in ATEC at UT Dallas, Jacob has found a passion for technologies that prioritize the preservation and promotion of healthy habits and lifestyles.
Through his weekly blog posts, he will report on interviews, events, and interactions with new organizations and people related to technologies that prioritize human health.
The following is a summary of his research interests that he will pursue and write about in his weekly blog.
Research Goal for Lab Ambassador Position
Ideally, interaction designers want interfaces designed for everyday use to develop into healthy habits. Unfortunately, screen-based interfaces and modern city infrastructure trends promote sedentary habits.
Infinitely scrolling pages and endless content tunnels enable users to over-dose on screen-time. Common use of screens for education, entertainment, and leisure time encourage people to abandon physical activity. And lastly, American city infrastructures discourage walking with a hyper focus on the automobile.
Through my research, I seek interfaces with modern technology that improve human well-being. I seek infrastructure that empowers us to rely on our legs, not motors, to travel and navigate urban environments. I seek products that involve motion and break through the 2-dimensional touch screen barrier. I seek educational tools that encourage children to learn through active motion and participation rather than passive consumption.
Through the theories of embodied cognition, designers know that external objects can influence our cognitive processes. Now, the field of interaction design has realized the power that designed objects and experiences has over how we understand the world. While abroad, I will search for and document exemplars of health-conscious technologies that use the theories of embodied cognition to build healthy habits.
To those interested in my research goal contact me via email at jmh170830@utdallas.edu. I look forward to traveling all around Europe in pursuit of my mission.
Dr. James L. Carter, geoscientist, and associate professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Dallas, passed away on September 21, 2019, in his home at the age of 82. To honor James Carter, ArtSciLab member Ayen Deng has written and performed a spoken word poem in memory of the way he inspired all those who attended his last lecture on September 20, 2019. The slides in this video are from his lecture to accompany the performance.
Virtual Menageries puts us back in time amongst the collective elites. Berland forms a cohesive genealogy of the “menagerie” to encourage, challenge, and deconstruct our modern perception of non-human animals and their relationship to human meaning and existence. Virtual Menageries looks through the lens of mediation to draw affective and emotional weight to animals as symbolic messengers in the digital era. From the giraffe, to the beaver, virtual art, digital communications, cats, birds and music Berland maps out how animals have become not only the mediators that bridge worlds together for good, but also as the trafficked subjects of terror: tools made to control, methods for silencing, opportunities to proliferate a message, and catalysts in profiteering.
The book begins with a question that led to a series of other questions: “Why are there so many cats on the internet?” (Pg. 1) Which then led to thoughts about the roles of animals as symbols and figures in contexts. “How do animals help manage our perception of the Anthropocene? How do they disrupt our own relationship with digital technologies if they are so abundantly apart of them? If they are mediating in new ways, what content are they mediating, and in what context?” (Pg. 1) These are all questions that threw the book and Berland’s project into fruition.
Produced and created by Maisha Razzaque, a new series has launched on TheBold Roast: Student Conversations channel on Creative Disturbance.
The ArtSciLab is home to collaborations between artists and scientists who investigate topics such as experimental publishing, data sonification, data visualization, and the hybridization of art and science. This series is an audio experience that allows the spotlight to fall on its members as they talk to us about their careers, contributions, and passions.
Before things were written they were spoken. The Spoken Word has a rich historical basis, especially amongst traditional African societies where culture and knowledge was passed down in the form of riddles, proverbs, stories, poetry, music, and design. Today, spoken word remains a fundamental form of communication, though its limits in academia are rarely challenged. Spoken word poetry is a tool to communicate social issues. Today, it is increasingly popular among the youth with so-called ‘poetry slams’ happening all around the world. Spoken word is appealing as it is impactful and lawless. There are no literary restrictions that define what it is. Instead, it takes a more performative approach, aiming to reach — even interact with — its audience; it is centered on involvement and exchange.This is what makes spoken word, as a type of poetry, powerful: It surpasses communication and creates a participatory audience. Contrastly, scientific phenomena — especially with increasing reliance on technological tools — long ago left the realm of our physical experiences. Consequently, there expands a chasm in intellectual exchange across science and other disciplines that calls for the expertise of a poet. The poet’s role will be to create innovative, metaphorical models in words and to express the often abstract and intangible phenomena in science. The very nomenclature of science, which is often times misleading, could benefit greatly from the collaboration of a poet.
It is the ability of a word to transmit meaning from one consciousness to the other that has significance and power. There is a biblical story of people of one language, building a tower with the intention to reach God. Eventually God decides to confuse them by mixing their languages — thus, the place was given the name Babel, meaning a confusion of voices in Hebrew. The sudden shift in communications, one might imagine, would lead to the development of diverse cultures and ideas. Therefore, metaphorically speaking, the growth of the tower was no longer able to be focused on only one dimension.
To a large extent, the language of science is mathematics but supplemented by words, diagrams, or images, each of which acts as a model to communicate reality. Going deeper into the study of science, particularly physics, it becomes impossible to deeply understand, let alone explain, phenomena without mathematics. One can see mathematics, the main language of science, taking a tower-like trajectory; It becomes increasingly complex and eventually, too high for unspecialized populations to reach and interact with. And when things cease to have the capacity to be understood and influenced; then, they lose their power to progress and diverge through otherwise diverse minds.
The word ‘Science’ itself carries heavy cultural connotations. Science could be seen as a dreaded school subject, a subject that is distant for people unexposed to its exciting study. How the scientist sees him/herself depends on their level of experience as a scientist. Personally, science has evolved from a de facto puzzle of a classroom study to one where there is a lot of structured seeking with a lot of room for speculation, interpretation, mistakes, evolution, and a lot of meticulous tedious work and creative planning.
Ideas of scientism stating that science is a closed box, superior to all other modes of intelligence, not only limit but harm our society.
Science affects everyone and exists in all of creation. It is understood in one way by scientists another way by artists, poets, spiritualists and other disciplines. All these distinctions are relevant for practical purposes. They are not laws. Our strength and integrity as a society will be found in open exchange between science and the other disciplines. Such permeabilities are what will allow us progress in multiple degrees of freedom, adding wealth to science studies and how we as a diverse persons view and interact with it.
One of the entry points in which such exchange can occur is our reliance on models to understand and discover new things. The very model for how learning takes place includes formation of new networks of knowledge upon already existing ones. Our minds work like an intricate web making connections in order to understand and develop ideas. In her book Models and Analogies in Science, Mary Hess makes reference to positive, negative, and neutral analogies. Negative analogies being those that we know are unable to fit into a description, positive being those that agree, and neutral being those that are unknown and have the potential to be investigated. This is where spoken word poetry comes in. Poetry would excel at making connections between science principles and unexpected elements of life, juxtaposing vivid imagery which enlivens striking metaphors and narratives — engaging the scientist, science, and everyday life.
For example the verse below: “Our consciousness , so close, yet so distant, allows us to travel at the speed of light when we fall in love ;(that’s about a 24 times a year for me- twice a month before and after ovulation) But like two ends of the same string, we sink to normality in the greyness and redness of stuff. Though we are made of things that are the substance of light , we can only pulse in inconsistency” This describes how time dilation, that occurs in general relativity, is the same kind that is experienced by humans when they are focused or feeling intense emotions such as pain or love. One can model traveling at the speed of light to be analogous to being deeply focused or in intense enjoyment where the actual time is moving much faster than the time internally experienced. It also touches on the wave particle duality, and the relationship between physiology and personality. Spoken word could lead to a plethora of analogies with the potential to be sorted and investigated. Neutral analogy is just one of the pathways that could lead to research investigation, thereby spoken word poetry is a prime example of art as a research method. It can clearly be used in learning. It’s not uncommon for fantastical scenarios such as: “ What if you found yourself in space holding a….” to be used in a classroom question, but it is often not taken further. Though metaphors might shift from their origin, they always find their way back in some form. Vital is the kind of imagery and metaphorical tension existent in engaging spoken word narratives that trigger the mind’s imagination in ways that information in itself could never dream of.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world,” (Albert Einstein).
Spoken word most importantly holds the power to open room for discourse between unexpected combinations of people.
There seems to me, a great potential to develop scientific spoken word exchanges for the stage, research, learning, creating art, and cultural revolutions.
References
“What is Science” by Sundar Sarukkai “A review of African Oral traditions and literature”: by Harold Schlub “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger “Making science intimate” by Roger Malina “Science et cetera et cetera for poets et cetera” by John A Moore “Genesis” Judaic Bible
A vital component for the development of technology
By Cris Kubli
Since the consolidation of evolutionary theory in the 19th century, many scholars have believed that progress is a linear phenomenon. For it to succeed, one must be as rational as possible, make improvements every time and follow a rigorous set of rules that are known as the scientific method. During this time, certain disciplines such as the biological and physical sciences have been glorified as essential tools for human advancement— all while leaving the arts, humanities and social sciences behind and deeming them less important for human growth.
Since the lab’s conception, the window of the ArtSciLab has been underutilized. Currently, there is a whiteboard that never gets updated with new information, and to the casual observer, there is nothing to differentiate the lab from other rooms in the ATEC.
ArtSciLab members,
Scot Gresham Lancaster and Zura Javakhadze are pleased to announce forthcoming performances of the Data Stethoscope Project- these are performances will involve using the electronic chess board provided by the UTD Chess team (thanks Zura), software modules from the project that allow you to see things you cannot see in the big data being sonified and visualized. It is part of the ArtSciLab method to carry out art performances as a transdisciplinary research method.
The performances will be in September in Dallas at
a) the Dallas Chess Club
b) the Dallas MAVS ESPORTS facility in Deep Ellum
This is a call for interest:
a) if you would like to play chess in public with scot on the chessboard, please contact us
b) if you have ideas on how to make the performance artistically powerful and memorable, all suggestions welcome
c) we are looking for help creating podcasts around the performance, a video and video abstract and other public-ations on the performance
d) we welcome ideas for creative disruptions or disturbances in the design of the performance
One of the previous performances is described at http://malina.diatrope.com/2016/10/28/marcel-cage-and-john-duchamp-perform-reunion-at-nine-evenings-2-in-seattle-tonight/
Please contact Scot or Roger if you are interested in being involved.
Roger Malina
Graziella “Ela” Detecio worked on the ArtSciLab team as a Junior Designer. During her time here, she contributed to the design of project and marketing materials of the lab. As it’s time for her to move on to the next step in her career, Yvan Tina, team leader of Creative Disturbance, sat down with Ela and asked her a few questions as a part of her transition out of the ArtSciLab. What attracted her to the ArtSciLab position?
Ela found the ArtSciLab through cofounder, Cassini Nazir. This job was a chance for her to gain design and marketing experience and work toward her career goals: consulting or client-based work for a creative marketing or design firm. How did Ela rate her experience the ArtSciLab overall?
Towards the end, the position was not exactly what Ela expected it to be. She was expecting more graphic design and marketing work from the position and would have preferred it if there were clear goals because some of the ideas were good but seemed to “trickle into obscurity.” Creative Disturbance, though, was an overall good experience. Is there any new skill or insight that Ela has acquired through the experience?
Ela valued the experience running the ArtSciLab website, as well as the exposure to academic research conducted in a lab. What would she change from her experience?
After Ela’s mentor Cassini transitioned, she felt lost in her role. A more consistent art/design supervisor would have been ideal. According to Ela, what makes a good manager and what should be their attributes?
Ela says it’s important for a manager to set an overall vision for the team by identifying practical goals to work towards. She valued Roger encouraging students to pursue their interests within the lab What are some difficulties of teamwork?
Communication with the team is a difficulty. She found that horizontal hierarchy presents challenges for the younger student workers. Using Trello and Airtable for transparency and progress tracking can improve these issues within the lab. What project management experience did she learn?
“I learned a lot” Ela says. The structured nature of Creative Disturbance taught her that organization can lead to improved productivity. Where is she heading next?
Ela is joining the Student Union and Activities Advisory Board (SUAAB) at UT Dallas to work with the marketing chair on developing awareness of SUAAB on campus.
