i'm taking a digital lanscapes class and one of our assignments was to look at a website by trebor scholz and carol flax: http://www.arts.arizona.edu/boundaries/. scholz is the amazing curator of the freecolaboration gathering in buffalo new york. haven't heard of this flax lady but she has a cool name, so i'm sure her reputation follows. it's weird being in this course because when i was younger i was a total media junkie. watched a lot of t.v., spent all my money on mens magazines (because they had better art), and spent my late nights exploring the digital art world; 0101010101010101010 x 10. i would go into sites and click on everything. flashing .gif's were my best friends, along with good design. i didn't know much about "code" beyond my stint at the tender age of four with ms dos and tetris. i did know about file directories, so i would go into people's image file directories and look at all their uploaded pictures that they didn't want people to see. often times i would find porn and family photos. or hidden pages. i remember on one artist's website, if you went to the file directory, as opposed to the index file, you would get a similar page with different links.

from my obsession and my large picture collection i would make my own websites with microsoft front page. i would make tables and scale all of the images to the same size, matching them with poetry and scanned drawings. it was good stuff, and i think i probabley still have an archive somewhere.

now in class i'm learning how to do the real code stuff; css, xhtml, java, etc. it will be exciting to do it from scratch, just more labor intensive. do y'all code? what kind of code to your prefer when you're making websites?

sooooooooooooooooooo,

it's the first day of school, my first real day of school, complete with professors, grades, exams, papers, essays, and other such marvelous things. personally, i am just really excited to learn and be challanged. i think that going to york is a really good option for me.

it's like i'm starting a whole new life... eating healthy, quitting smoking, going to school, working out, no boyfriend... just plenty of positivity.

:)

had my first two classes, community arts and social change, and video art. they're pretty un-academic, so i guess i got off easy on that side of things. both courses are studio oriented, with a lot of creative flexibility in terms of content.

i'm suprised at how many framiliar faces i come across on campus. everyone looks like someone's elses sister or cousin. there are tonnes of six degrees of seperation; the lighting technition is a gay porn activist who i did a workshop with two years back. i made giant puppets for the FTTA protests with my community arts T.A.. so random.

anyways,

that's all for now.

This is an amazing news site.... read on!


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The following is the result of an interview I just conducted via cell phone with a New Orleans citizen stranded at the Convention Center. I don't know what you're hearing in the mainstream media or in the press conferences from the city and state officials, but here is the truth:

"Bigfoot" is a bar manager and DJ on Bourbon Street, and is a local personality and icon in the city. He is a lifelong resident of the city, born and raised. He rode out the storm itself in the Iberville Projects because he knew he would be above any flood waters. Here is his story as told to me moments ago. I took notes while he talked and then I asked some questions:

Three days ago, police and national guard troops told citizens to head toward the Crescent City Connection Bridge to await transportation out of the area. The citizens trekked over to the Convention Center and waited for the buses which they were told would take them to Houston or Alabama or somewhere else, out of this area.

It's been 3 days, and the buses have yet to appear.

Although obviously he has no exact count, he estimates more than 10,000 people are packed into and around and outside the convention center still waiting for the buses. They had no food, no water, and no medicine for the last three days, until today, when the National Guard drove over the bridge above them, and tossed out supplies over the side crashing down to the ground below. Much of the supplies were destroyed from the drop. Many people tried to catch the supplies to protect them before they hit the ground. Some offered to walk all the way around up the bridge and bring the supplies down, but any attempt to approach the police or national guard resulted in weapons being aimed at them.

There are many infants and elderly people among them, as well as many people who were injured jumping out of windows to escape flood water and the like -- all of them in dire straights.

Any attempt to flag down police results in being told to get away at gunpoint. Hour after hour they watch buses pass by filled with people from other areas. Tensions are very high, and there has been at least one murder and several fights. 8 or 9 dead people have been stored in a freezer in the area, and 2 of these dead people are kids.

The people are so desperate that they're doing anything they can think of to impress the authorities enough to bring some buses. These things include standing in single file lines with the eldery in front, women and children next; sweeping up the area and cleaning the windows and anything else that would show the people are not barbarians.

The buses never stop.

Before the supplies were pitched off the bridge today, people had to break into buildings in the area to try to find food and water for their families. There was not enough. This spurred many families to break into cars to try to escape the city. There was no police response to the auto thefts until the mob reached the rich area -- Saulet Condos -- once they tried to get cars from there... well then the whole swat teams began showing up with rifles pointed. Snipers got on the roof and told people to get back.

He reports that the conditions are horrendous. Heat, mosquitoes and utter misery. The smell, he says, is "horrific."

He says it's the slowest mandatory evacuation ever, and he wants to know why they were told to go to the Convention Center area in the first place; furthermore, he reports that many of them with cell phones have contacts willing to come rescue them, but people are not being allowed through to pick them up.


I have "Bigfoot"'s phone number and will gladly give it to any city or state official who would like to tell him how everything is under control.

Addendum: Bigfoot just called to report that "they" (the authorities) are cleaning up the dead bodies at the Convention Center right now.