Sustainability Outreach
Sustainability Presented by the Student Environmental Association at The University of Michigan-Dearborn: http://sustainableum-d.blogspot.com/
Here on the internet from this blog, you’re more likely to see my interest and celebration in human creativity. As humans are integral to natural creation, and it follows that we can find profound beauty and inspiration in natural creativity as well. The concept of sustainability as it’s used today essentially prompts us to critically consider everything in the interest of doing good–socially, economically, and environmentally in a way that doesn’t place one over the other in their significance. I started the blog for the SEA as a way to proactively communicate the concepts and experiences we explore at the University as students, as well as improve the outreach and awareness of the organization in the community. I’m pleased to know that it’s still going strong even without my contribution at this point, and it has enlisted another talented contributor and administrator (though you’ll still find many postings from me there too)!
Culinary Adventure!
You can read my other blog, Southeastern Michigan Culinary Adventures with Ian Tran here: http://semica.blogspot.com/
It isn’t quite as refined as some of the other ventures I present here on Light Telecommunication, but it’s certainly an enjoyable venture and sometimes even tasty! I enjoy cooking (and eating) a variety of things when feasible.
I’m with the band, but what does this mean?
I’m actively musicking. I also play with the Detroit band “Elemental Meaning”. I try to tie in some existential insight with whatever we play, though I must confess that I don’t know half of the lyrics to any of the songs our band leader, Markita Moore, sings.
You can find out more about the band, its music, and (eventually) some of my “elemental musings” about being in the band and making music with them at this blog/website of ours: http://elementalmeaningmusic.blogspot.com/p/about-band.html
Chalk in/after high school?
I just came across this today (27 XII 2011) –I forget why I made it, but it was signed 2006, probably while I worked at a summer camp. Either inspired by imagination or Rip Van Winkle. I think I’ll call it “Meditation Tree” as it looks like something I had imagined in the past. The blackened sun was inspired by a phenomenon I noticed with my old samsung cell phone camera where extremely bright light sources appeared black. The rest was an exploration of bright colors on paper.
The piece below was submitted and published in the Lyceum (The University of Michigan-Dearborn’s Literary Fine Arts Journal) as a collection of documentation and observations.
Column-homage to Donald Judd
http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~idtran/Column_IanTran.pdf
A fond memory from my freshman year of college at University of Michigan-Dearborn, this piece was as much a prank as it was a tongue-in-cheek nod to contemporary arts, minimalism, and call to action spurred by the lack of fine arts activity on the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus. It was up for approximately six hours and viewers/other artists (unknown) had rearranged the tables in interesting ways as the day progressed.
Inspired by very minimalistic (almost non-functional) tables that populated student study spaces on the third and fourth floors of the UM-Dearborn College of Arts, Sciences and Letters building, and a bit of frustration that the Dearborn campus community was fairly deficient in the arts (no performing or applied arts majors offered, and almost no fine arts initiatives from the student body). There’s a fantastic story that goes along with the construction and conception of the piece, but you’ll have to hear it live sometime as I won’t fit all of its details here. I improvised a descriptive art placard and affixed it to the side of the column minutes before an accomplice and I started gathering the tables from student study areas on the 3rd and 4th floor of the building. It read:
Exhibit #1 of the Constructive Energy exposition
Column-homage to Donald Judd, 2006
This interference of the vertical space is a paradox between the literal and scientific. The medium (readymade tables ¾ utilized without the consent of the University of Michigan Dearborn department of Humanities and ¼ utilized without the consent of the University of Michigan Dearborn department of the Behavioral Sciences) in its original state has a high potential to further or enhance the learning experience of the student. At the same time, the tables (in their default dispersal) are a demonstration of high entropy. This stacked arrangement reduces the entropy, thereby raising its potential energy. Though it reduces the potential for conventional student learning, it is the artist’s hope that it will bring fine and performing arts to the attention of the public (especially the student body). To those impassive of the piece, it is merely a troublesome object imbued with capricious and mildly plausible meaning by a troublesome set of students.
For those curious about Donald Judd and why I made this an homage: Donald Judd is a famous minimalist artist who has one of his installation pieces (a stack of blocks adhered to the wall) on display at the Detroit Institute of the Arts. Column piece was constructed from four unusually hip looking tables in the lobby for the Department of Humanities and the Department of Behavioral Sciences.
What’s minimalism? Here’s my take–be concise, communicate an idea with simplicity. I think the “stack” sculpture of his on the wall of the Detroit Institute of the Arts is a pretty good example of that.
An armored saurian on a middle school (8th grade) book cover (I forget the title, something like The Great Horn):
 |
| What’s more exciting than a muscular velociraptor/dinonychous? A muscular velociraptor/dinonychous in armor. I hadn’t quite discovered Bill Waterson’s “Tyrannosaurs in F-14s” yet, and I’m doubtful I saw anything like this in Dinotopia. Either way, it made me look forward to 6th hour social studies a little bit more (“Come on human, were on the run, open the book!”). |
Adventures in MS Paint (and other programs formerly perceived as crude graphical software)
The Great Debate
This was made in ms paint as part of a recruitment flier for the UM-Dearborn Debate Team during the 2008 election season. I was struck by how much attention the media gave to hot-button election debates, but rarely covered in-depth discussion and discourse over important issues during other times of a “political cycle”. By the time elections come around, many “dialogs” exist to make a candidate look good rather than to uncover what’s truly needed. I intentionally tilted the image so that the female debater was on “lower ground” so that it could be interpreted as an existing gender inequity, or that she’s outweighing the opponent with better evidence (perhaps both).
MS Paint as Photoshop
In the early days of facebook, I would devise ways of inappropriately using the given features to do as I pleased–perhaps it counts as crude hacking, but certainly not sophisticated in any way. One venture was to play hangman using facebook walls, and organize a league via facebook groups. This was the group image I created for the game:
Light Telecommunication 