Blogs

Shane Pickett, Medicine grounds that become ready during Bunuroo, 2008 acrylic on linen 183 x 153 cm

For the sake of clarity, I should probably note that Bunuroo (often spelled Bunuru) is the Noongar word for the season occuring around Feburary-March. It is the hottest time of the year. According to Pickett, "Bunuru is the season where many adolescents become adults and the songs of marriage and responsibilities are of importance."

Mathias Goeritz (German, active Mexico City), Message No. 7B, Eccles. VII:6, 1959. MoMA

This is the suite of Lynda.com and YouTube videos that I have been suggesting for a few terms to the humanists around who want to learn more about modelling data in a relational database form. The links for lynda.com are set to allow Pitt folks to login--if you're coming to this without a lynda.com login, then sorry...there's still lots of YouTube stuff here!

FIRST SESSION: Data Modeling Basics

DEBATING VISUAL KNOWLEDGE GRADUATE SYMPOSIUM
3-5 OCTOBER 2014

Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland expressed the intent of their voyage was to discover how the "forces of nature intersect upon one another and how the geographic environment influences plant and animal life."  They hoped to  "find out about the unity of nature."  The voyages and their "discoveries" did not necessarily uncover new knowledge, but rather interpreted the knowledge of the South American continent and made it legible to a European audience.

Thinking about Decomposing Bodies, I came across many Bertillion Card Forms that were missing their left corner.  The loss of these corners meant that the card type could not be properly determined.  Thus the card type was catalogued by making my best guess between "1900s Card with 'Stoop'" and "1900s Card with 'Eng Ht.'" The frequency of cards with missing left corners means that a substantial number of cards are potentially being catalogued incorrectly due to insufficient information.

I took the idea of creating a reading chart exercise from an essay on team-based learning at arthistoryteachingresources.org.  I assigned the first three chapters of Assmann's Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, an accessible but challenging text, for my 1010 course.  I created the chart (attached) and asked them all to fill it out and bring two copies to class.

As my colleague, Aisling, describes in detail here, we in the Visual Media Workshop have been transcribing Bertillon cards for the Decomposing Bodies project.

I took four undergrads to the Flight 93 Memorial today, three of them TAs in my 1010 course and one of them my daughter. The fields were full of goldenrod under a scintillating sky. The site is a huge strip of over 2000 acres located on an old surface coal mine, with wind power turbines turning in the distance.