DDC19 Descriptive Schedule

Monday, July 15

1:30 – 2:30pm | Beth Rosenberg

A Few Words About Neurodiversity

What is neurodiversity and why is it important in the 21st century? Learn about Beth’s personal journal from Founding Director of Education at Eyebeam in 1997 to
raising a child with disabilities to founding Tech Kids Unlimited, a not-for-profit organization devoted to students who learn differently.

Tuesday, July 16 & July 30

10:00 – 3:30pm | Ashley Bellouin & Cassie Tarakajian (C‘74)

Creating Digital Instruments in Max

This workshop will focus on using Max software to create custom digital musical instruments. Starting from a beginner’s standpoint, students will be introduced to Max and cover the basics of the software, then focus on creating experimental sounds by manipulating provided audio recordings and/or student’s own recordings. Some processing techniques that will be covered are delay, feedback, and filtering, as well as how to create a simple vocoder and sequencer. The end goal of this workshop is to create a musical instrument that anyone can play through a few simple button presses.

Wednesday, July 17 & July 31

10:00 – 12:00pm | Shannon Finnegan & Bojana Coklyat

Alt-text as Poetry

Alt-text is an essential part of web accessibility, making visual content accessible to blind people and people with low vision. It is often overlooked altogether or understood through the lens of compliance, as an unwelcome burden to be met with minimum effort. How can we instead approach alt-text thoughtfully and creatively? In this workshop developed by artists Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan, we will reframe alt-text as a type of poetry and practice writing it together.

1:30 – 3:30pm | Anneli Goeller

Virtual Portals: Augmented Reality

Augmented reality enables users to exist in the same space as the 3D objects or Avatars they create. This shared space is not fully digital, not fully physical, but is in between, and both simultaneously. This workshop is a proposal that augmented reality acts as a portal that opens a window onto a virtual world that always exists, but one which we need technology to access. Facebook’s augmented reality software, Spark AR, is not open source, but it is free. We can use the available tools of the megacorporation that dominates our Internet to our advantage. How can we subvert the expectations of a white cis heteronormative patriarchal corporation and use the tools it provides for a radical reimagining of our virtual and physical world?

Thursday, July 18 & August 1

10:00 – 3:30pm | Cory Metcalf & Sam Tarakajian (C’74)

From Sound to Image and Image to Sound in Max

Building on the Max 8 introduction from the first week, students will use Max to extract expressive data from audio and video. They will use free and open source technologies to extract features like the overall direction of motion, the position and articulation of faces, and the orientation of detected bodies. Additionally, they’ll learn how to map these to audio processes, turning the camera into a musical controller. Going in the other direction, they’ll also look at how to determine the amplitude and spectral centroid of an audio signal, and how this can be mapped to video in real time. By the end of this workshop, students will be able to create musical instruments that can be played simply by moving their bodies, and generated video that can be shaped by sound.

Friday, July 19 & August 2

10:00 – 3:30pm | LaJuné McMillan

Intro to XR (Extended Reality) @ Eyebeam

In the past few years, access to motion capture data, 3D base models, and software to “make an animation of yourself” has skyrocketed. From MakeHuman to Mixamo to CMU’s motion capture database, the ability to make and finish polished projects has become easier for many. While these resources are extremely helpful to create a range of projects, they lack tools to create diverse characters and movements unexplored by systems that center assumptions of neutrality. This workshop will introduce participants to the DIY 3D community. We will go over questions including “Who’s making in this space? How are they making?” and “Who is left out of the community due to a lack of resources?” Attendees will learn and create using current “accessible” motion capture and modeling technology, and will brainstorm ways to make the technology serve diverse communities/bodies in their needs and differences.

Monday, July 22

10:00 – 12:00pm | Shani Aviram

Shape Note Singing: The Punk Rock of Choral Music

Shape Note singing is the opposite of a new technology—It is arguably one of the oldest forms of American folk music. The ethos of Shape Note singing is based on accessibility and its practice was designed to allow for anyone, with any voice, and with no musical training to partake in 4 part harmony group singing. There is no performance or conductor. Everyone in the group gets to choose what the group sings. It is a democratic music practice. In this workshop, students will learn how shape note notation works, how to read it, how you can have a harmony without being a trained group of singers, and why music can be both complex, beautiful and accessible to make, with an instrument most of us already have and know well: our own voices.

1:30 – 3:30pm | Adelya Aksanova

Blockchain: What’s All The Hype About?

The class will open with a 30-minute introduction to the historical significance and evolution of blockchain from an idea to a multi-functional, open-source platform. In the next hour, the students will be part of a workshop where they themselves are the blockchain; some will take role of node, others the chain itself, and others will be conductors of the gossip protocol. If times allows, and based on cooperation, we will also demonstrate a fork and a 51% attack. In the last 30 minutes we will talk about bottlenecks and applications.

Monday, August 5

10:00 – 3:30pm | Yo-Yo Lin & Lara Marcin

Modes of Embodiment: The Body Tells The Story

This movement workshop is designed to create space to discuss our relationship to illness, trauma, and care through the art-form of dance. From writing, to group sharing, to personalized movement exploration, this workshop aims to equip bodies and minds with initial tools for deeper self-awareness and artistic expression. Driven by the ideas of intersectional disability artistry, this workshop is particularly interested in allowing participants to create movement informed by their unique relationships to illness, personal narrative, and cultural identity. This beginner-friendly class is specifically built for those who have not worked with movement/dance before.

Tuesday, July 23 & August 6

10:00 – 3:30pm | Alicia Grullon

On Access Today

In this workshop we will analyze personal experiences as important to understanding access⎼ the impact of lacking it and what having full access looks like in communities in 2019. Our goal is to create a short podcast on our findings in our workshop. We will critically connect our stories and interviews framing them to questions on US history and social justice issues. Together, we will explore how our stories are part of the larger narrative in US history.

Wednesday, July 24 & August 7

10:00 – 12:00pm | Anna Gichan

Textured Listening—Seeing Sound

In this workshop students will draw the shape of their lips pronouncing a word to stimulate how a Deaf or Hard of Hearing (HOH) person lip reads. Students will observe lip shape, teeth visibility, and negative space for each sound produced. We begin with a close up recording of one’s own mouth pronouncing a word and then break down the video into individual sounds so that each sound becomes a still image to reference for drawing. By the end of the workshop students will have a drawing of lips to read.

1:30 – 3:30pm | Alice SparklyKat

Memes of Dissent

This is a class where we go through the history of memes and meme culture with a social justice lens. We would take a look at memes outside of and within the USA to talk about how they may dissent to and inform our political climate, spread sentiments, and create solidarity. Some memes that we would focus on are pepe, leftbook, 草泥马, and surreal memes, asking ourselves questions such as “What are the layers of information someone would already have to know to understand this meme?”, “What makes a meme a meme?”, and “What does it mean when memes become more standard and corporate?” At the end of the workshop, students will create their own memes about a self chosen issue.

Thursday, July 25 & August 8

10:00 – 3:30pm | Ingrid Raphael

Flipping the Script

This multimedia workshop will explore the use(s) and storing of archives (music videos, photos, pop culture, writings, zines, etc…) with a critique on (in)accessibility + autonomy to control our pasts’ narratives. Participants will take part in questioning and dissecting where archives live, how they’re being used, and who has autonomy + control over them. We will then each take part in creating our own personal archival piece via video editing and filmmaking⁠—ensuring and practicing ownership + autonomy of archival storytelling. Ending with a reflection in the roles we play as editors, creators, and recorders to engage in the preservation and storytelling of our past to make sense of our present and ultimately, map out a radically different future.

Friday, July 26 & August 9

10:00 – 12:00pm | Student-led Workshops/Presentations
1:00 – 3:00pm | Party at Pier 2’s Roller Rink!