rose marshack : whyamistillawake.com

I drove David Foster Wallace’s ex-girlfriend to Normal, Il, to take a train to Albuquerque. I only found out that she was David Foster Wallace’s ex-girlfriend as I was driving her. I only knew her as my ex-Tae-Kwon-Do student. But today in the car, she said, “Oh, remember I told you my ex-boyfriend (whom she talked about a couple of times before) used to work at ISU. His name was David; he taught in the English department.” But this time she said, “Maybe you had heard of him?” Like through my faculty links now, I might have heard of him.

I sort of choked and said, “UH…. well…. … Infinite Jest was a very nice book.” Trying to stay on the road.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be David Foster Wallace’s girlfriend - or ex-girlfriend? She talked about how he and Rick Powers used to get compared to each other.

Why would anyone compare those two? Jesus Christ! It would be like comparing Night and Day.
My life gets very intense sometimes. Maybe that is why I cannot sleep.

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Ryan’s Battle Serve - Volley 1Originally uploaded by imagepractice

ISU vs. UIUC : Photoshop Tennis! 

My friend Ryan Griffis at UIUC (I don’t even know which blog or website to put up for him, he’s so prolific; let’s try http://www.yougenics.net/griffis/) agreed to have his Image Practice class (which meets at the same time as mine!) play Photoshop Tennis with my Art/Music/Theatre 388 class! It was fantastic!

Here are the results: http://flickr.com/photos/12356252@N05/ ; the user on flickr is imagepractice. If you scroll up from the bottom, you’ll see the progression of events; these are students who are just learning photoshop. In my evaluation of what went on formally, I think that the UIUC team worked a lot more with photorealism; you can see the correct shadows on images they placed.

By far the best part, though, was how wired the students were in the class. I generally hate any type of competition, but this was very fun. The atmosphere in the class was electric! I wonder if it was the same over at UIUC? We at first were going to to iChat with the other class so we could “meet” but the video didn’t work due to restrictions at UIUC, but I think this was fortuitious; in not meeting the other class, I think it provided more of an unknown opponent. At the end of the class, the students who didn’t know photoshop well seemed way more interested in learning it, so we’ll have tutorials next week.

All seems to be going well! I am wondering, where is the catch?
I guess the catch is that I’m so consistently excited about my job and teaching that I cannot sleep very regularly.

A wonderful volley from the UIUC team.

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http://www.eddostern.com/runnersWOLFENSTEIN.html

actually this might not help.

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In my Arts Tech class today we reviewed chapter 2 of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (he’s such a brilliant man!) which really is about “Amplification through Simplification.” Your art (or whatever you do) could have further reaching effects if it’s less personal. I have a some really great students in the class and they have lots of brilliant things to say!

But then I presented VTS (http://www.vue.org) which I think is a fantastic way to talk about Art Education (which is now even being used for teaching doctors to be more holistic in their diagnoses of patients, lawyers to be more understanding of their clients, etc.) - and a fantastic way to watch people get more engrossed in art, and also to develop critical thinking skills.

Unfortunately I’m pretty sure the class didn’t understand what this had to do with teaching them how to use digital tools to create art better. To me, it teaches them how to decide which tools to use, and what art to make. We’re not at the using the tools area yet. Maybe I should tell them this on Thursday.

This is the age-old problem that art schools have; the students don’t understand that we’re not going to teach them trade-school stuff. My friend Aaron explained that the students sometimes cannot see the whole puzzle; and we’re handing them the puzzle pieces. Great way to explain it!

Then I went home and made a 7-year old kid cry in my Tae Kwon Do class. I told him he wasn’t ready to test for his next belt yet. He absolutely wasn’t, and he could be paying a lot more attention in class. So he cried, and then I felt terrible. I tried to tell him that this is not about him as a person, he’s just not at the point in the journey where he’ll get the next belt.
I’m trying to become more of a hardass. I think people will respect me more for it. I probably will, too. But it’s going to be difficult and painful.

The most wonderful teaching of the day was this: the little 7-year old kid, with tears in his eyes, went back into the class line and continued practicing. It made me pretty weepy. So I announced to the entire class that someone wasn’t quite ready to test yet, and they may have felt sad, but they got back in line and kept working, and everyone should give them “two claps.”
And later on, in practice, I made the little guy laugh. But I know he probably still felt bad when he got home.

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Does someone want to explain this to me? How can I teach this to The Kidz when I cannot understand it myself? http://remixtheory.net/

I’m on a “No Electronics After Sundown” kick. Except for the internet tonight because I have to get my lesson done for tomorrow. With teaching, it’s hard to know when enough is enough.

Tomorrow I will present Visual Thinking Strategies to my “Architecture of Participation” class as a form of art education which teaches critical thinking and also elicits participation from those who usually would not. VTS (and other art education) has even been used in training doctors to learn to better listen to and diagnose their patients.

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I’m completely out of my mind tired. But I have to write something here. I met such bright, incredible students today. I’m very happy with where I find myself.

I’m teaching two classes that I almost wish could come together. One is Introduction to Music Business, and the other is Special Topics in Arts Technology. It’s more than a little daunting to set up a syllabus. How do I know when I’ve taught enough? One of the classes has a book I can follow, but the other I am just taking every wonderful thing I’ve ever learned and teaching it in a class. Today I got to present Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Monument, John Snow’s cholera map, the Clock of the Long Now, and some work of Fernanda Viegas to people who have never seen these things before! Can you imagine how excited I was?!

But it’s still scary to know how much to teach so I have asked one of my old mentors Professor Kevin to meet with me (and thank goodness he agreed) - and I’ll pester him to give me the answer to the question.

Meanwhile,

is Theory like HTML? No, says Kevin,

He’s just so smart, even if he’s getting older now. He’s even older than 30, I think.

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I searched for Posterchildren on Flickr and found a bunch of pictures of us playing at Millenium Park. And I created a Facebook group called “I liked Poster Children before they became famous” which I thought was funny. I’m doing a whole self-promotion thing. Although I could only get up the guts to invite my Mom and Rick to the Poster Children group, and Rick didn’t even join.

Tomorrow - no, today - is the big day, my first day of teaching at ISU!

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A professor. Do you call yourself “Professor?” Should I? The New Media dept at UIUC are all known by their first names, but I think that some of the Music Dept at ISU use “Professor Lastname.” I always found it kind of a buzzkill that we could call the professors at UIUC by their first names. Almost like, “Hey, why the hell am I paying you so much money if you’re just a firstName like me?” Who knows. I don’t think I’ll be able to pull off the Professor thing except perhaps in the Music Business course. It’d be kinda neat though. This all reminds me of the book White Noise by Don Delillo.

I have a great quote from Lipstick Traces that I will fumble on if I start the class with it. I’ll have to save it for day 2.

I must speak to a boy named Elvis Presley,” said the headmistress of a London comprehensive academy in 1956, “because he has carved his name on every desk in the school.” - p 41, Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus

And of course there is the greatest work of art ever, done for Web 2.0, Michael Wesch’s “The Machine is Us/ing Us.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g.

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I now have some time to read. I need to get smarter so I can make my students smarter. I’m also trying to work on a sequel to “Tickets To The Sunset.” And here I come up across this: http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2006/07/28.html. The cult of efficiency vs. the principle of sufficiency, eloquently stating what I’ve believed is wrong with what I call “greedy people.” “North American Scum,” to quote LCD Soundsystem. Of course this blog entry was written in 2006. I’m always at least a year late on things.

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I’m calling it the land of the sunsets because it’s west of the fields here. But doesn’t it sound like a paradise?

I’ve had almost a week of meetings and orientations at ISU, watching faculty clap for each others’ achievements, smile at each other. It’s just the culture there, I guess. One speaker noted that “The word is getting out; if you want to go to a college where you’ll be taught by a PhD and not a graduate student (’and not a TV set,’ I would add), you’ll come to ISU.” People nodded. We’re definitely the Second Ship here in Illinois, and UIUC is the First Ship, but I don’t care because this is the Teaching Ship and I want to teach.

I saw a kid with a mohawk today, looking for keys. I wanted to grab him and give him a little squeeze and acknowledge his alternativeness (which probably would have upset him greatly.) The other day, I saw what I think might have been a Music Business student. Next week I get to meet all my new students and start teaching them! I’m SO in the right place. The ISU website is great; has all kinds of information I can use to learn to teach, it actually WORKS and you can find info on it. In fact you can get your class roster and even see the students’ pictures along with their names!! It’s incredible! ISU is just like a lean, mean, fighting machine to my old school’s dreadnaughtness, that’s all.

I have to say I miss all my old colleagues and teachers though. I had a moment where I realized I was in a different place, yesterday, in fact, and I wished I could have run over to A&D and given everyone hugs. But I’ll do that next week sometime when I return some keys and paperwork. And instead, today, I just sent everyone an email from my new ilstu.edu account.

We played a Poster Children show in Millenium Park a couple of days ago, and it had to have been around 95 degrees out there. It was great to play a challenging show again! We had tons of fun but it really was kind of like fighting a war, which is pretty much what we’d do anyway on the stage even if it wasn’t over 90 degrees. So by the end of the show I was exquisitely happy and probably 2 wrong breaths away from fainting.

Millenium Park - especially the water area - is gorgeous. I will post some pictures, but there is a water area where you can walk on 1-3 inch high water on grey slate-like rocks, and there are two giant monolithic towers on each end of the water, filled with LEDs surrounded by glass bricks and water pours over them. Giant ‘video’ faces beam out from the monoliths, and water sprays over them and sometimes out the mouth of the face. Every so often, the amount of water falling over the top intensifies and the people standing underneath (beside) the monolith scream in glee as they are pummeled with water.

The beautiful thing about this water-park is the social aspect of it. I found that the personal space barrier between people was the smallest I’ve ever seen in my life, in this water area. People of all colors sat next to each other, left their shoes yards away from where they were playing, smiled - no, grinned - at each other as they dashed past each other. Little kids ran around half-naked, adults stood with the kids under the waterfalls. Everyone got really close to each other, in a way you’d probably never see anywhere else, not even in a pool situation. I’m not sure if it was the feeling like we were all dwarfed by the incredible Chicago skyline all around us (we’re all in this together sort of thing) or the happy faces beaming down on everyone, but everyone felt like friends.

Now that I think of it, it’s probably the water that brings everyone together; it’s something that’s touching all of us in the park. And it’s hugging us, it feels wonderful in that heat. It’s like we’re all a bunch of babies in a womb or something. I remember someone (either my dad or a famous comic) noting that on the street, if a car passes you by, you want to kill it and the driver, but on the water, on a boat passing by, everyone waves to each other like they’re long-lost relatives.

Time for me to go to bed and worry a bit about how to record oboes. That’s the one thing I might not know how to do so well. But I have a book!

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