Ebola coming to America has been called a “situation,” a “crisis” and a “scare,” among other things. Here’s a 4-minute clip from NPR on the chances of the virus becoming airborne or mutating.
Category Archives: Community
James Geurts’ Work at Zhulong Isn’t Merely Large in Scale, It’s Global
[Image: Amelia Jaycen]
At first glance, the work of James Geurts may not be what you expect to see at Zhulong Gallery. The relatively new exhibition space calls itself “the new light on Dragon street.” It differentiates itself from most of the other galleries by outwardly embracing new media, and work that interacts with contemporary technology. Saturday’s launch of Re-Surveying: Measuring Site utilized landscape art, photography, and public works.
Geurts is based in both Melbourne and London. Geurts’ vision is related to the shape of the earth itself, while he also ties in complexities of the human understanding of time and space. His presence in Dallas offers a different perspective on new media than the one to which we’ve been accustomed.
Geurts resuscitates anachronistic technologies that seem a far cry from new media–until you take another look.
Inside)(Outside: A guide to Dallas performance art for the uninitiated
[Image: Andi Harman]
A woman is lying on the floor of an 8th St loft space in Oak Cliff like a sacrifice, seemingly possessed. Streams of thick white light shine from a lamp straight down into her open throat and then refract out the other end in strings of color. Her eyelids are still, wrists limp against the floor. Her knees are bent, spread just enough to allow a rainbow to escape from between her legs and spiderweb into the room. Not touching her is impossible—the room can barely be entered without climbing over or under the colored strings attached to the walls. Curious figures tip-toe by this quiet sensuality, some trying not to touch anything, others unaffected by the fact that the strings are literally connected to her most private region. Once, at another show, a guy tried to pull the copper piece tied to the strings from inside her as she performed. She wasn’t sure if it was ultimate art or ultimate trauma. Her boyfriend was furious.
“People get very offended with being confronted with nudity, with the human body. They don’t like being exposed to it or forced to confront it. They consider it exhibitionism,” Houston artist Julia Claire says. “For me it’s a way of dealing with relationships with people; with having to be close to them.”
Claire’s installation in the upstairs Spotplus gallery was the climax of a night of performance art, and like many of the other acts, hers left a bunch of curious onlookers trying to figure out what they were “supposed” to feel.
Digital Frontiers 2014 brings digital scholarship to North Texas
“Digital Frontiers is a project to explore innovation and collaboration across disciplinary boundaries in the arena of public humanities and cultural memory.”
The annual conference is produced by the Digital Scholarship Co-Operative at the University of North Texas.
Barents Summer School brings researchers face-to-face with local leaders
[Image: Students and local leaders in the Barents Summer School in Kirkenes, Norway. Credit: Amelia Jaycen]
Twenty-four Ph.D. students including Norwegian, Russian, Finnish and Swedish students, some of them representing the Sami population, and one student from Hong Kong gathered to establish international collaborative relationships and learn about conducting epidemiological research: Studies of disease patterns, causes and effects over time.
The one-week course centered around human health issues in the cross-border Barents region. Students who attended are researchers in a variety of subjects ranging from suicides among indigenous populations to the effects of pollution on infants born to exposed mothers.
Information about food. That’s Feed Denton.
A local upstart reaching people by combining the power of information with food news in Denton, Texas.
Also, see research from Feed Denton’s Andrew J. Miller–>
Out of the Loop’s star Diana Sheehan on the festival, living in Texas and Gertrude Lawrence
[Image courtesy WaterTower Theatre]
Diana Sheehan is an award-winning actress and singer who relocated to Dallas five years ago and found herself following a successful New York career with a shining start in Texas, including winning “Best of the Loop” two years in a row at Watertower Theatre’s Out of the Loop Fringe Festival, among a variety of notable awards and performances in Dallas. Loop provides her and tens of other artists a chance to explore new material with enthusiastic crowds, as it has for 13 years.
This year, Sheehan’s Searching for Gertrude Lawrence is a cabaret exploring mysterious stories surrounding the most famous Broadway star in the world from the 1920’s to 1950’s.
Thin Line Film Fest expands with 100 films, music, photo contest coming soon
[Image: Josh Butler outside the Campu Theater marquee. Photo by Amelia Jaycen]
When Josh Butler took an energetic leap of faith toward his dream, he didn’t exactly land on his feet. It was more like a really bummed film junkie who landed in bankruptcy court. Staring at the floor he shook his head, “Why! Why did we just have to have limos for all the filmmakers?”
Making the great Texas film festival was going to take more than spastic enthusiasm, but Butler learned his lesson: Don’t spend money you don’t have. The festival and the nonprofit he created to run it, Texas Filmmakers Association, survived intact while he swallowed a $40,000 debt. But since that 2007 Thin Line Film Fest left him broke, the festival has nearly doubled its revenue each year.
A Covenant Running with the Land
The City of Denton implements new building codes for large complexes like Rayzor Ranch so water washing over acres of concrete is cleaner when it hits local water sources. The push is part of regional and national clean water act responses.
Researchers track West Nile Virus, study mosquito species
[Image: Amelia Jaycen]
University of North Texas Regents Professor of Biological Sciences Dr. James Kennedy is conducting his twelfth year of mosquito sampling and testing for West Nile Virus (WNV) in cooperation with the City of Denton, and this year is the first year samples are analyzed at UNT as well as sent to the Texas Department of Health State Services.
Denton’s Brave Combo is sure to do something different
Brave Combo not only challenges the feet with a dare-to-dance attitude pouring from the stage, but their music challenges the mind, mixing global genres including mambo, meringue, waltz, zydeco, classical, cha cha, the blues—and of course, polka. Led by charismatic founder and front-man Carl Finch, the group holds a long-time tradition of headlining the closing show at Denton’s annual Arts and Jazz Festival. The Sunday night performance at this year’s event will be no exception.
Brave Combo is known for pushing musical limits, successfully riding the line between comedy and mastery, giving performances that are a mix of dancing fun and serious musicianship while living up to their famous lyricized motto: “Do something different.”
Farmart
Story of Electronics
Mountain Bike
