The Penn Currentrecently ran an article on Meta Mazaj’s Oscar picks, which I can’t resist sharing. Mazaj, who lectures in the Cinema Studies Program and is currently teaching an introduction to film studies course, a class on film festivals and a graduate course on world cinema, singled out these winners:
Best Picture: The Artist or Hugo
Best Director: Martin Scorsese for Hugo
Best Actor: George Clooney in The Descendants or Jean Dujardin in The Artist
Best Actress: Viola Davis in The Help or Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn
Best Supporting Actor: Jonah Hill in Moneyball
Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Chastain in The Help
Will you watch the Oscars this weekend? Who are you rooting for?
I haven’t heard about any Penn alumni who will be up for awards this year, but you may remember last year, when I wrote about Todd Lieberman C’95 and Tom Heller C’95, both of whom had produced 2011 Oscar-nominated films. (You can also reader a longer interview with Heller here.)
On the last day of 2011, Kien Lam W’06 logged on to his YouTube and Vimeo accounts and posted a video he’d made. He’d been trying his hand at time-lapse videos since October, but there was something special about this new one. It swiftly became an Internet sensation and in less than a week, it had almost a million views on YouTube alone.
In addition to its stunning photography, viewers loved the video’s inspiring back story: In August 2010, Lam left his job as a financial-firm strategist and spent 343 days traveling around the world. He visited 17 countries and took more than 6,000 photos. When he got home, he established himself as a professional photographer and, by the end of 2011, had fused his travel photos into a time-lapse video. (He even squeezed in a nod to Penn. Don’t miss the Locust Walk scene at 3:05.)
Now based in San Francisco, Lam put down his camera to answer a few questions about his incredible round-the-world trip.
Can you run me through the events that transformed you from a 9-to-5 employee into the world traveler who created this video?
I used to be very envious of the people I’d meet on my travels who told me they were traveling around the world for six months or a year at time. Where we met was simply just one of many places they would see on their journey. I would return from my two-week trip wishing that I could quit my job, pack a bag and explore the world more than one country at a time.
In 2010, I felt like it was a good as time as any to take a break from my career and travel before it became too hard to leave. I wrote down all the places I had always dreamed of traveling to, packed a bag and bought a one-way ticket to London, where I’d get to visit some friends and start my journey. I had a general idea of the direction I’d be headed, but I left it pretty open-ended. I didn’t always end up where I thought I’d be going and often times found my “itinerary” was created from city to city.
Along the way, I wanted to capture my journey in a way that could both preserve the spirit of the trip and what I experienced. I didn’t want to only capture beautiful landscapes devoid of people. How do you show the busy maze-like city of Fez without showing the people? How do you capture locals and visitors hurrying about in Taksim Square? Wherever I was, if there was some form of movement in the scenery and I happened to have my camera, I would set it down and take about 40 to 60 photographs timed a few seconds apart. As the pages of my passport filled up with stamps, so did my portable hard-drive with thousands of images that would eventually be put together to form this video a few months after I finished my travels.
Did you have regrets about leaving your job at any point on your trip?
It was a little unusual at first to think that I’d no longer be receiving a bi-weekly paycheck or that I had to wake up a certain time to get into the office, but that disappeared pretty early on. On a few occasions, I would miss the sense of accomplishment you get after delivering on a big project and grabbing celebratory drinks afterwards.
Tell me about some of the most memorable moments from your travels.
I am a big fan of scuba diving and I could go on and on about how amazing it feels to be underwater and watch as a school of barracudas dart about perfectly synchronized or swim ever closer to massive sharks or a baby turtles. Above land, I think about celebrating Christmas in 80-degree weather on a tropical island in Thailand, riding a motorbike through heavy Bali rush-hour traffic and returning the rental in one piece, and sleeping under the stars in the Sahara with nothing but miles and miles of sand in every direction.
Which places are at the top of your list to re-visit?
I would love to go back to relax on the beaches of Lagos, Portugal, dive around the islands in Thailand and Indonesia, and explore the landscapes of Bolivia and Peru. What are you up to now?
Somewhere along the way, I made the decision to pursue photography as a full time professional and it is something I am dedicating my time to for the foreseeable future. Beyond just taking images, I like to tell stories and capture moments whether it’s with a camera, on film or with a brush on canvas. At the moment, I am splitting my time between portrait and wedding photography.
What about travel? Where are you hoping to go next?
I’d love to explore Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, take the Trans-Siberian train between Russia, Mongolia and China, and somehow get to Antarctica to get to that seventh continent.
Last week, a diverse group of puzzle lovers gathered in Irvine Auditorium to hear from Will Shortz, the New York Times’ crossword puzzle editor. He’s held that post since 1993, but even if you’re not a crossword fan specifically, you’ve probably encountered Will’s work at some point. He’s been the puzzlemaster on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday since 1987, and he’s the man behind several best-selling Sudoku books. He’s also the only person in the world with a college degree in “enigmatology”—that is, the study of puzzles.
Shortz came to Penn as part of the academic Year of Games. (You can read more about that theme year here, and even print out a few ancient games to try.) As part of his presentation, Shortz discussed the main requirements for a crossword puzzle (symmetrical design; words of three or more letters; lively language), his favorite puzzles, and the psychology behind our attraction to puzzles.
Here, Shortz explains his all-time favorite crossword puzzle: an Election Day edition that appeared November 5, 1996 and offered two possible solutions to the clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper (!).”
And here, Shortz shares his thoughts on why we’re drawn to puzzles in the first place:
Following his presentation and a brief Q&A, Shortz split the audience into two teams and quizzed volunteer participants, NPR puzzlemaster-style. Wondering how you would have done? Here’s an example of one of the games Shortz led that evening:
Given two words, anagram the letters of one of them to get a slang synonym of the other one (i.e. DRUNK and MOBBED ==> BOMBED — an anagram of MOBBED that is also a slang synonym of DRUNK). -COOL and CRAZY ==> ?
-DEBUTS and BANKRUPT ==> ?
-GENIUS and NINETIES ==> ?
Since 1998, Guthrie Ramsey Jr. has been teaching Penn students about music. His classes have covered jazz history, studies in African-American music and jazz improvisation, as well as general introductions to musical life in America.
Ramsey has also continued to create music outside the classroom, playing piano and keyboards with his ensemble, Dr. Guy’s MusiQology. The latest result of that collaboration, Ramsey’s new album, The Colored Waiting Room, will hit stores later this month. We caught up with the popular professor last week to discuss the music he makes (“jazz infused with the sounds of R&B, funk, soul, Latin, and hip hop”), the music he teaches, and the music he’s listening to right now.
Tell me about the title of your new album.
I’m not just making music for people to enjoy—I also want to draw people into higher levels of consciousness and make them think about things in different ways. To me, the “colored waiting room” refers to a space of containment. It was meant to keep people separate and to keep people down, but I think what happens inside those very unpleasant experiences is that people actually make their own joy, make their own pleasures, make their own world and what they desire. As a result, [these rooms] weren’t just spaces of containment, they were also spaces of freedom and freedom dreams. So what I conceived of for this CD is that this colored waiting room is actually a nightclub—that the songs and spoken word on this CD take place in a nightclub called The Colored Waiting Room. It gives people a way to think about both sides of this coin.
What are some of your favorite tracks from the album?
The most sentimental track for me is “Little London’s Lullaby.” It’s a little blues lullaby that I wrote for my granddaughter when she was born two years ago, and my daughter—her aunt—sang the song on the album. It’s really sentimental to me because I trained my kids in music and now I’m trying to make the impression on my granddaughter that, ‘Hey, this is what we do.’
There’s another song called “Lake Como (Remix)” that I think might be my favorite on the CD in terms of how it turned out. I wrote it when I was staying on Lake Como in Italy a few years back. I recorded it as a solo piano piece, and a bass player who’s also on the CD said, ‘Wow, I can’t stop listening to that song.’ Those are the kind of comments you pay attention to, so I remixed the song and scored it for a full band.
I heard there was a lot of student involvement on The Colored Waiting Room.
Students who are interested in the real-world practices of the music industry have few formal or extra-curricular outlets at Penn. Consequently, some of the students who take my history and literature classes see this other part of my life and want to participate because they get to see the real workings of someone trying to put together [music] projects. They take independent studies with me or volunteer to help out with different aspects of the projects. It’s analogous to undergraduate research, but we’re working on projects. For this album, one of the students actually did research on mixing and mastering and sent around listening sessions. [Other students] wrote liner notes, and some helped write and produce the film I put out for this CD.
When did you first start making music?
I was exposed to a piano teacher around age five or six [but] I didn’t get really serious about it until I was about 11. Then it took over. It was just something that gave me many, many hours of peace.
Did you start out playing classical music?
I had lots of classical lessons in high school and college, but a lot of it has been in jazz and popular music. I started directing church choirs in 7th grade and then playing in jazz bands in high school. I was a real focused and directed little kid. It was kind of strange, man. After I graduated high school, I went on the road with a rock and roll band touring.
As a musician yourself, what are some of your goals as a professor of music?
One of the things I like to demonstrate to students is how much about the world you can learn through the study of musical practice. I also try to show them that people have lots of really personal feelings about music, and that there is a social constitution to what feels personal. I try to show them that all these attachments and identifications they’re making with musical practices are part of a larger cultural framework.
What are your thoughts on the current music scene?
There’s a lot to dig about it and there’s a lot that’s not so good about it. It’s very tough to make generalizations about any musical genre or form, but one of the reactions I’ve been having from [my new] CD—people always bring this up—is that it’s kind of a throwback to a stronger musical past, that there’s something different about what they’re hearing in this project than what they’re sensing currently in the music marketplace.
What do you think it is that’s lacking from current music?
So much music that people are finding disrespectful to themselves and others always gets the greatest attention, always has the highest sales. Across the board, there’s a lot of music circulating now that people find deeply offensive. I think that there should be alternatives. I don’t believe in censoring people, but I believe that if you present strong alternatives for people, we may see a shift in the aesthetic.
What are you listening to right now?
I’m listening to the new Nicholas Payton album, which is very controversial. I’ve been trying to understand where this CD fits into the larger scheme of things, and in my hip-hop class we recently talked about that piece’s pleasures and problems.
I’ve also been listening to a CD by Bill Ortiz—he’s a Latin Jazz artist—and to Christian McBride’s new CD [The Good Feeling].
I’ve been especially interested in CDs that have been independently released because I’m about to do that myself.
Have you had a chance to read the latest Gazette issue? In the Alumni Profiles section, you’ll find an interview with Dan Markowitz EAS’11, the Digital Media Design major who recently won $10,000 for his “animated aquatic action-adventure” Board to Death.
Markowitz told our senior editor, Samuel Hughes, that when the call came in he “thought it was a prank at first.” But there was no joke: Markowitz had won the top prize for an “Action” video in the Vidi Entertainment Online Student Film Festival.
Here is his winning animation:
And here is Markowitz’s summary of the inspiration behind it:
“I enjoyed stop-motion a lot, so I wanted to do something in that medium for my final project. My room is covered in bulletin boards and whiteboards with rubber bands and pictures and strings and things pinned to them, so I settled on doing something with a bulletin board pretty quickly. Initially I was going to animate with Post-it notes on a board, but I realized that rubber bands wrapped around thumbtacks was something I’d never seen before.
For the story, I decided on using fish because they can be made from really simple shapes, and the rubber bands would let me do lots of squash and stretch and other fun animation techniques. I was trying to think of an ending that would involve one character reaching out of the board—literally “thinking outside the box”—to do something. Originally I had a story about two jellyfish on different bulletin boards trying to reach each other, but I figured that a chase would be more dynamic. The idea of one character using scissors to cut the other one’s rubber bands came pretty quickly after that.”
In addition to his videos, Markowitz also draws comic strips. Since 2004, he has often used Glass Half Empty to reflect issues and themes from his own life—first as a high schooler, then a college student and now a post-grad. (Recent topics include the new Facebook Timeline, robots and things to do in a heat wave.) In 2009, Markowitz launched a second series, Fickle Theatre, which he describes as “more surreal and less character-focused than Glass Half Empty.” Here, Fickle Theatre presents “The 2011 Awards for Stuff Awards”:
It’s almost time for the New Year’s Eve countdown, which means it’s also time for *our* countdown. Here, without further fanfare, is an illustrated list of the 11 most-viewed Arts Blog posts of 2011 (and yes, some of these originally appeared on the blog before 2011, but clearly that didn’t stop anyone from reading them this year, too):
Al Filreis and Charles Bernstein with PennSound equipment (photo by Mark Stehle)
On New Year’s Day 2005, when it seemed that everyone we knew either had or wanted an iPod, Penn English professors Al Filreis and Charles Bernstein introduced a new use for mp3 players. Transforming poetry readings into downloadable files, they created PennSound—an online archive of free poetry recordings, most of them “song-length singles.”
They started with about 1,500 recordings, but when I spoke to Filreis yesterday, he said that they’re now up to some 35,000. There’s other big news, too: Last Friday, PennSound Radio took to the airwaves, sending 24-hour streaming poetry content straight to iTunes and smartphone users, no mp3 downloads (or radios, for that matter) necessary.
“We just really wanted to put it out there,” Filreis told me. “We’ve been talking about it for some years. The only issue was whether we had the person-power to really keep it going.”
With a director and an associate director in place and “a lot of support from the smart people in IT at Penn,” Filreis said the new poetry stream allows listeners to “just tap a button on your smartphone, pipe it through the speakers on your car, and you’ve got yourself a radio station.”
It’s something an increasing number of commercial stations are now offering, but according to Filreis, PennSound Radio is the only one he’s found that broadcasts high-quality academic, cultural material.
The daily schedule includes rebroadcasts of series such as Live at the Writers House, Charles Bernstein’s Close Listening and Leonard Schwartz’s Cross-Cultural Poetics, as well as a curated selection of the team’s favorite performances. Here’s an example of the current rotation:
AM
12:00–8:00 Poetry Mix
8:00 Live at the Writers House
9:00 Daily Selections (repeat)
10:00 PennSound Classics
11:00 Cross-Cultural Poetics
PM
12:00 Featured Program: Ceptuetics Radio
1:00 PoemTalk at the Writers House
1:30 The Long Poem
2:00 Close Listening
3:00 Featured Program: In the American Tree
4:00 Featured Series: Mills College
5:00 Daily Selections
6:00 PennSound Classics
7:00 Into the Field
8:00 Featured Press: Belladonna*
9:00 Live at the Writers House
10:00 Poetry Mix
11:00 Jean Shepherd
To start listening right now in iTunes, click here. If you prefer to stream PennSound on your smartphone, Filreis recommends installing the TuneIn Radio app and searching for “PennSound Radio.”
Who’s up for a game of Paramapada Sopaanam? Or maybe just a quick round of Quirkat?
Aside from being really fun to say, these games are more familiar than you might realize. In Penn’s most carefree-sounding “Year of…” to date, the University is now midway through the 2011-12 Year of Games. (Not familiar with the “Year of…” concept? You can learn about its origins here.)
Sponsored by the Provost’s office, the year includes interdisciplinary conferences, symposia, exhibits and performances, all produced on Penn’s campus by various schools, departments, resource centers and partners. As part of the current theme year, the Penn Museum has organized a small display of games of skill and chance drawn from its collection. The installation features ancient game pieces, sporting equipment and cards.
Here, Museum Register Chrisso Boulis highlights a few items from the games collection:
While visitors to the Museum can pick up recreated board games to try their skill at ancient pastimes, six printable versions are also available on the Penn Museum website. Be sure to check them out, and maybe even bring a few along for holiday visits. (After all, nothing says winter break like playing The Royal Game of the Goose.)
Click through this image to reach the Museum’s games download page:
In my mind—which I’ll admit does not speak for all minds—puppets and musical theater should be at the top of any Great Things list. It was pretty exciting, then, to see the two combine in the Penn Players’ performance of TheRocky Horror Picture Show this past weekend. In a twist I’ve never seen before, the show used a large, body-worn puppet to portray Rocky, Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s latest creation. Here’s a (somewhat blurry) photo of Puppet Rocky flexing his biceps:
And here’s Rocky cowering from the criminologist:
Puppet Rocky came from Alisa Sickora Kleckner, a theatre artist who has designed costumes, puppets and masks throughout the Northeast and who serves as an adjunct faculty member and resident designer at Arcadia University.
For further Penn Players/Rocky Horror fun, check out the flash mob that cast members staged on Locust Walk leading up to performance weekend:
If, like me, you didn’t catch this exhibit when it appeared in Van Pelt Library’s Eugene Ormandy Gallery in 2008, the online version offers the same materials and the same detailed look at the life of 18th-century African-American musician Frank Johnson.
Here, from the exhibit, is some background on Johnson:
Francis (“Frank”) Johnson (1792-1844) was a Philadelphia musician, bandleader, and composer. Little is known of his musical training, but by his mid-twenties he had become an accomplished violinist and cornetist and led a dance band that was a favorite among the elite of Philadelphia. His talents eventually were renowned far beyond his hometown through tours of England and the American Midwest during the late 1830s and early 1840s.
Johnson was also an African American, and although a free man, he lived in pre-Civil War America, a time when—even in free states—societal racism imposed limits on the activities of African Americans. His accomplishments were ambitious and remarkable given the overt and sometimes hostile racism he faced, particularly when touring outside Philadelphia in areas where he was not known.
His musicmaking centered on two traditions of Philadelphia high society: evening entertainment, including balls and dances, for which Johnson’s string and brass bands provided cotillions, waltzes, and quadrilles suitable for dancing and socializing; and assemblies and processions of regional militia, for which Johnson’s brass band played marches and quicksteps.
Johnson was born on 16 June 1792 in Philadelphia to unknown parents. By the time of his birth, a thriving community of free African Americans had been established in Philadelphia. Although he spent his summers performing in the resort hotels of Saratoga Springs and made occasional regional excursions with his bands, Philadelphia remained his home throughout his life. He died in Philadelphia on 6 April 1844 at the age of 52 after an extended illness. Following his death, Johnson’s band continued performing under the direction of bandmember Joseph Anderson. The band eventually dissolved during the years of the Civil War.
The virtual exhibition incorporates a host of materials and information about Johnson, including his performances for the Philadelphia elite; his instruments and music; and his trip to England. In addition to documents, sheet music and photographs, there are a number of audio recordings of Johnson’s compositions.
For those who want to delve still further into Frank Johnson’s life and work, I also discovered this lecture by Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., Associate Professor of Music.
You can check out the library’s other 40-some virtual exhibitions here.
The Penn Current recently ran an article on Meta Mazaj’s Oscar picks, which I can’t resist sharing. Mazaj, who lectures in the Cinema Studies Program and is currently teaching an introduction to film studies course, a class on film festivals and a graduate course on world cinema, singled out these winners:
10. 
9. 
8. 
7. 
6. 
5. 
4. 
3. 
2. 
