A couple weeks back, Brohemus and I stopped by a Critical Media Lab gig at the Kitchener Studio Project on Gaukel driven by Professor Marcel O’Gorman. On display and on tap for discussion were student projects from two of Marcel’s very makerly courses from the Department of English at The University of Waterloo. Above, Intro To Digital Studies (ENGL293) student Mike Reitmeier locked eyes with his robot…
At Gaukel and Charles. Hopefully this is the beginning of greater animation of this space.
Mike explained some of the anthropomorphic features of his bot and the necessity to take it by the hand for a walk so that it would be willing to play catch with you.
I’m a big fan of minimal cues of human-ness, having explored that a bit in some of my projects.
Know what this is?
Digital Abstinence (ENGL799) student Jennifer Schamehorn facilitated the capture and sharing of photos through a variety of mechanisms including this Polaroid 210 Land Camera.
Here’s a selfie Dave took of the two of us. You peel apart the film and the print…
and the result is pretty cool. Just to have something physical as an outcome of that. Also, props to Brohemus for deftly framing that shot. Have to say the negative was as interesting as the print.
Meta!
Jennifer sourced this film from B & H, which inspired Dave to…
dig out his Polaroid cameras and order film for them. At about $2 per frame, you compose the photos very deliberately.
Remember these ecological disasters from the ‘90’s? So-called disposable cameras. Choice rig of wedding receptions and summer camps everywhere, back then.
More familiar: phontography.
Prof. Marcel O’Gorman…
assembled us all for a performance piece by…
Matthew Schwager, who played…
Für Alina on the…
computer keyboard.
And there were even more photography-related projects…
Celia Girgenti created this pin-hole camera.
And Samra Malik made this one.
This all gets me thinking about following some friends as they pursue film-based photography.
Homebrew filters?
I met Marcel back in the day through a kwartzlab fieldtrip to his newly instantiated Critical Media Lab, then housed at the old Public Utilities building at King and Gaukel. I later shot CriMeLab’s Cabs of Curiousity show at The Artery. Wherever they’re housed, Waterloo Region you should pay attention to Marcel and his crew. This makerly cross-discipline Venn Diagram not only includes our faves of art+tech+making but also throws in a layer of UW-academic-study-and-sharing-meets-the-streets-of-DTK. Those watching already know they’re seeing the future.
Engaging robots.
Giant camera.
Thanks for the invite, Marcel and CriMeLab. Make on!
DW