UMaine NMDNet

Today at 10am I went to shoot a Haiku at a local CVS with a nice young girl name Strawberry (yes that is really her name).

I recently began working for mulit-media artist and Bates professor William Pope L. At the start of the summer I applied for an artist assistant and project manager position for Pope L. he recently received a fellowship grant to move his life work to a gallery in Chicago. I, among a few others are assisting him in this daunting task.  Part of this job requires me to sort through work produced over 40 years and the more I saw the more surprised I became, surprised at the fact that an extremely accomplished, progressive, multi-media, artist, living in Maine had never come up at my time atUMO.  Popes work spans from video art, installations, abstract drawings, and public performances.  Pope L.’s work could be compared with the Likes of Felix Gonzalez-Torres with a reminder of Happenings of the early 60′s. It’s an unusual job but a truly unique and interesting one, I must be extremely versatile and self thinking. Seeing work such as Pope L.s is quite inspiring and I’m learning a lot both artistically and professionally. If anyone gets some time I suggest you check out some of his work.

Recently got to see some fantastic work coming from the NMD department capstone class. Would like to specifically note The Everyday Maine documentary project by new media student Ben Brazier which is a series of 1 minute audio and still documentaries about various people throughout Maine. This sparked me to start checking out job opportunities in the documentary film field and i came across this: http://www.documentary.org/community/IDA-resources/jobs Think this would be useful to those new media students (such as myself) who couldn’t code themselves out of a box, or ever write a code that made a box for that matter and let people know that what we learn in New Media is more then graphic design and webpage development. This would be especially useful for anyone who HAS taken or WILL be taking the Camden International Film Festival class next year.

The Strange Status project will be holding an exhibit this Friday and Saturday and would like to give YOU the opportunity to submit your work.  The exhibit is entitled RE: Interpretations and work that reinterprets a media, movie, song, photo, ect. will have top consideration. The exhibit will be held in Orono next to Lissus pizza Friday and Saturday night from 4-8. Even if you don’t submit a piece make sure to come and check it out.  Door prizes graciously donated by some of Oronos fine establishments will be given out to those who attend. Submissions should be in the form of a jpg or link to a video demonstrating the project Send Submissions to: alexander.marquis@umit.maine.edu Deadline: Friday April 9th by 12pm This exhibit is made possible with the help of: Orono Pharmacy Pat’s Pizza Margaritas Restaurant Verve Burbee and Bates The Roost

Bookmark this category I’m starting a project inspired by the ever evolvement of social networking sites such as facebook and twitter. Status Updates have developed from rhetorical information to full on debates, some spanning several paragraphs. But by being hosted on a public platform in which virtually anyone can let their opinion be known these threads can become tough to intemperate very quickly. Multiple conversations with separate meanings often appear in the same thread, making interpretation of the dialog difficult to follow. This project is intended to exploit that fact and use it as a platform of creativity. It is also a question as to who owns the content on a public domain? If someone uses something you freely post for their own benefit are those people entitled to it? Let us know your opinion at [ http://strangestatus.wordpress.com/category/inspiration/ ]STRANGE STATUS.com Alexander Marquis New Media “Never be ashamed to ask for information. The ignorant man will always be ignorant if he fears that by asking he will display ignorance.” -Booker T. Washington