how would you define platform engineering and how different if it is from DevOps or SREs or they can overlap? These are just labels. It's very good that you bring up the word labels because that is what it is. Like, sometimes it's the same thing, but we give it like different labels. And sometimes that's driven by, you know, like marketing concerns, maybe, just give it a new name to make it sound hot and then it's like easier to market. But then also I feel like there is a shift in focus. So originally it was DevOps meant developers also need to learn about operations so they're able to have full responsibility for the entire lifecycle of the code that they develop and ship. And now, and I guess this will be something that we can talk about going further in this conversation. Now we're kind of like shifting away from this idea of DevOps and saying like, you know what? Devs should just focus on developing, on providing value to the end user and we should try and abstract everything else away so they can just focus on this one thing. And I feel like that's kind of the idea that kind of reemerged in the last couple of years. I think the right way to think about it is not different. It's a natural evolution. And what I mean by that is if you look at any DevOps maturity model, broadly speaking, you have generally five stages where you have no DevOps, you're just starting off, then level three is you've got the basics, you've got everything going, then you get to start measuring things. And then kind of in the last step of DevOps, broadly again speaking, you start optimizing what you're measuring. So where does platform engineering, it's the next step in so far is once you've done all this work, right? Once you've figured out what works, once you've instrumented it to measure it, well, why don't you just reuse all that? Why don't you reuse all that for different groups, for different projects, for different workloads? Because presumably, right, if you've gone through that and if you've done an even remotely decent job, there's value in it and you can reuse a lot of that to help other teams that might not have put forth the effort into it. Now, it's not different in that it doesn't walk away from any of the concepts of DevOps, of the philosophies, right, of either technical or otherwise, it's actually the opposite. You can think of it, I think in the platform engineering versus DevOps, it's now you're productizing it for all intents and purposes. You're productizing the automation, right? You're productizing the pipelines so that others don't have to go and rebuild all that again, right? And presumably, the way to think of it or the way to think of it rather is just packaging up all those different tools. So you do have to, in a sense, really think of it as a product manager, albeit internal, right? So there's a lot of things you might be able to get away from, but that's essentially what platform engineering is talking about or packaging all the stuff. So it's an evolution in a kind of systematic way of packaging all these things. Platform engineering actually has two different sides to it to me and I think part of what I look at is this side of saying enterprises have been given the directive to create self-service environments for their app dev teams, right? That is part of platform engineering and it's a big part of it. But on the other side, and they've been building products or trying to create products that service developer self-service needs from that perspective. On the other side of it, there's also a drive within these companies to consolidate and add more centralized control over how the infrastructure behind those efforts is managed and that is also part of this platform engineering system. So the platform engineering includes both the how do I enable dev self-service without overly constraining developers and as an infrastructure and operations team how do I build and rationalize consolidated control over all of the different infrastructure requests that I have coming in? And platform engineering is really, ends up being a product management function of delivering that type of service because at the end of the day companies need product is the wrong word here because there's no one product that's gonna deliver it. Even rack end doesn't have enough scope to solve all these problems. We don't want to have enough scope to solve all these problems but from a enterprise perspective they actually need to start thinking about this as a product management problem. Which APIs are we gonna do? What features they have? How do we offer those features? How do we deliver it? It's really this advent of defining the relationship between the app dev teams and the backend infrastructure in a productized way. And that's the really significant part of how all this platform engineering sort of works is that productization or this standardization approach. Well, I think of it this way. Platform engineering is sort of industrializing DevOps. So in DevOps, the idea that you could integrate and automate and create automation pipelines that really supported developers in releasing more frequency. And we saw people looking for continuous improvement. Well, now if you scale that and you think about DevOps at sort of the next level of maturity you've got all these different teams, all these different parts of your organization embracing automation and using integrations. And you mentioned that involves security, right? So security comes in as part of that.  Or do you say, look, our DevOps has evolved to the point that we need to do platform engineering. So we'd like to centralize and standardize and perhaps have a group who knows how to do certificate management and can do it on behalf of the developers or knows how to create an automation pipeline and can build that integration to the infrastructure in a more standard way. And does that take the friction out of every developer having to do it? So I think of it as like a DevOps enabler or a DevOps accelerator versus something that's in the conflict with DevOps. Platform engineering is the practice of allowing the application development team to really purely focus on the development and reliable operation of their application without having to concern themselves with the complexity and the implementation details of really everything else. And that everything else is the platform. And the platform engineering team's responsibility is to build and run and provide as a service that platform which allows active teams to run in the manner that I just described. I think it can be helpful to go in and share a contrast to the platform engineering model. And that contrast is DevOps. I think these days, if you go to job boards or titles inside organizations, there's still a lot of organizations who still hold on to the DevOps nomenclature. They have a DevOps engineer, right? And I think that the reason that maybe that's stuck is really because similar tools and skill sets are in play in both the DevOps and the platform engineering roles. So it's the tools that back then it was Jenkins. Now it's more get-of-actions or Tecton or Argo CD or whatever it might be. But back in the DevOps days, the people, specific individuals who were wrangling the tools and the releases were a part of DevOps. And it just kind of stuck because the platform engineers are today in the correct model are still wrangling those tools. And I think it's also worth us discussing. Oh wait, just real quick. I know everybody understands this, but bear with me. Okay, because I think it's important to go to recount what the DevOps model was. And even though people might say, no, no, we understand what the DevOps model is. And we've moved away from that. But I would say that in your organization, if you have DevOps engineers or platform engineers who, for example, are wrangling releases for multiple app dev teams, then that would be evidence that you are still stuck on the old DevOps model, okay? The old DevOps model was this.  The dev team was responsible for writing the application and they would go and package that, build it to a deployable artifact, a binary or a jar file or whatever it might be. And they would hand it over to the ops team. The ops team would take that deployable artifact, place it on a server that they operate and they would run it. Meaning they would carry the pagers for if there was anything that was problematic from that application. And the reason I think was because back then, sort of the most visible part of the failure when the application failed, had an outage or had problems, the most visible part of that was from the server point of view. You would go in and look at metrics on the server, use the error logs that are very low level that are written to Syslogs and that's why these people were responsible for it. Now, the problem was that the developers domain of concern and the operators domain of concern had nothing to do with each other. The operators didn't really understand the development point of view. We're talking about application specific characteristics like what was the memory utilization on this thing? What are the failure modes of the application itself and not the platform? And conversely, the application development team didn't really have an appreciation of what it meant to operate this thing, what reliability meant and what they needed to do. And so then DevOps was born. And I know DevOps isn't a team, it's not a function, it's a mentality, right? But realistically, you had people who were tasked, they were commissioned to go and say this is your responsibility to the team. And so the DevOps mentality was born where they tried to understand one another's cadences and they try to coordinate that a little better. Okay, now, as the new thing these days, I think I'm way behind the curve and saying something like cloud is sort of the new thing. A lot of organizations are moving over to the cloud and what you really have to get right more than ever on cloud is reliability because it's really, really difficult. If you go in and take the old mentality of how you wrote and deployed and operated applications on, let's say, a local data center or just in that mindset and you move there over to the cloud, everything from sort of the balances of cap theorem to tangibly how the applications operate, it's likely that your application will run worse in the cloud if you just lift and shift. Just your shared resources, you have different uptime or availability of the compute resources that you're running on and that model is gonna put you probably in a worse place. And it really comes down to complexity of having to learn a whole new platform. So moving away from sort of DevOps over to a platform engineering model, if I were to sort of give you a picture and there are two dimensions on one dimension. I would say that the skill set and the sort of mindset is actually pretty similar, right? It's people who are concerned with not, all the things around the product and not the product itself, right? So it's the illities, if you will, right? Reliability, security, scalability, et cetera. And that can come in different forms. It can be a consultative kind of view. And I think a lot of SREs take that mindset where it's like, oh, look, I'm gonna help the team out. We're gonna be a first line of defense. We're gonna help them measure and improve. DevOps tends to do the work sometimes as part of the team, sometimes again, centralized depends. And then the platform engineering, at least the way I've seen it done is generally building a platform. They're building something that then they have internal customers that they're using it. So it's kind of like different approaches or even different degrees to how self-serve is it? How consistent is it? What is the thing that they're responsible for that they own? And is that a concept or is that a system? And if it's a concept, then it's like, okay, I'm gonna be responsible for reliability. What does that mean? I have to now define that set of practices and tools and outcomes. As opposed to the platform where you take the repeatable services that everybody inside of your company requires, which they may be able to get from a cloud provider, but more likely they're gonna need to hook together multiple systems with some configurations, some consistency, and that'll give you everything from compute, network storage, database, identity, observability, et cetera, et cetera, as a part of a platform. And hopefully, obviously some metrics and goals around that, some service law objectives or whatever, but something that is a running system that other teams internally can leverage to build and deliver whatever software they're building. That to me is really what a platform engineering team is that's different. And the SRE approach is much more focused on how do we improve reliability? How do we measure reliability? I would say DevOps is much more about, how do we take responsibility for whatever goes wrong? How do we make sure that all the things that need to be done to deliver the product are done in an appropriate way? I think platform engineering is really a new trend that we're seeing, especially in large organizations where you need to have a center of excellence for how you do cloud infrastructure, cloud engineering best practices. And the platform engineering team typically sits between maybe the operations, more IT centric folks and developers. And their goal is to really be, like I said, center of excellence, establish best practices, put in place the systems that allows the organization to scale and ultimately just empower the rest of the organization to ship faster with confidence, compliance, cost controls, all the things necessary in sort of a modern enterprise looking to go to the cloud. Yeah, it's a fairly new term. But I think at the heart of it, it addresses all problems. And the way I see it is that it's a way to try to address and mask all the complexity that we have today in cloud-native and cloud-native infrastructure. Essentially just, not just in quotes, but just trying to optimize developer productivity and doing so by often allocating a dedicated team, building out an internal platform, an internal team at a large corporation, building out an internal platform that sort of helped building out tool chains, workflows, et cetera, and essentially providing sort of self-service for the internal development teams that the company has. Essentially, it all boils down to that infrastructure is very, very hard today. It's really hard to manage the complexity of the richness of it. So it's not just bad, but we've got this complexity because there's too many decisions, there's too many products, there's too many things to integrate. And how do you make sense of all of that? They can be daunting. And if you then have a dedicated platform team that can focus on taking most of these decisions and providing higher level primitives and work in managing very hard things like security, making sure that you're under compliance and all of these things, so that the dev teams are liberated or set free to focus on what they are best at doing, writing the business logic, et cetera. So that's how I think about platform engineering. Thank you.


Welcome to the library's E-anatomy tutorial. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use E-anatomy's collection of body images, CT scans, ultrasounds, MRIs, and 3D images. Right now, we're on the E-anatomy homepage. E-anatomy is divided into four modules. Head and neck, thorax, abdomen, pelvis, limbs, and spine. I'm going to choose the brain to show some of the viewing features available for each image within the collection. Once you've selected a structure, you can choose a different part of the structure with the gallery view located in the bottom left corner. You can also navigate through these by scrolling when the scroll tool at the top left corner of the toolbar is selected. You can manipulate the image by using the other options available on the main toolbar. The second option from the left allows you to move the image. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in and out, or the next two icons, the triangles, to flip the image horizontally or vertically. All the labels that you see are controlled under the anatomical parts menu. In this menu, choose deselect all to remove the labels, and then choose the ones that you want to view. Another feature in the top bar is the quiz mode, which looks like a speech bubble with an A inside. In quiz mode, the labels are replaced by numbers. You can test yourself and then hover over the number to see the label of the feature. Information on the page below the image provides additional details and information. You now learned the basics of navigating and viewing images in E-anatomy. If you have any questions or would like any additional help or information, please contact the Bellevue College Library.


gonna go for five? Oh my goodness. Jacqueline, oh my goodness. Congratulations. Someone's what not name is dumpster Muppet. I think the most important thing about picking a name is something that's easy to remember. Congratulations Jacqueline. That was a awesome buy. Okay, we have DWA, this thing. This is a Imaginext. I don't know what this is.  Is this one of those? It might be. I'm gonna put that over. Is it adorable? I might be. Here's a popcorn. Here's Rubble on the Double from Paw Patrol. This looks like something Barbie. Not sure on that one. Here is a Bingle Tiger by Safari. Oh, I don't think yours is terrible. I can remember it, so it's not terrible. The names that I can't remember that I struggle with those are the ones I'm like, oh, that's so hard. Yowie. Oh, look him up, guys. See if he's good. I've sold some Yowies for decent money.  Google lends him. See if he's good. Yowie brand. Always look up Yowie. Some of those do well. I don't know if that one does or not. 2001 Mattel Kitties. I'm guessing these might be for Barbie. Don't know. This one has a lot of paint loss. It's from 2007, I believe. And this is a Little People Dog. And this is your bundle. You're gonna get all these for, gosh, there we go, for one money. Look up this Yowie. I don't know, but I think Yowie can be good. I think I've sold some Yowies individually. Number 477. $5 start. I did a pop up. I did a pop up show. I'm selling stuff from my lost footage. From the Goodwill Bins.  I'm doing that. That's what I'm doing tonight. And it's so fun. Cat Feelin' Thrifty is going on after me tomorrow, you guys. I'm going on at 11 in the morning. From 11 to 1, I'm selling jewelry. And then I'm sending you guys the Cat Feelin' Thrifty. All right, you guys, these are running for $5. $5. Super duper. Oh my goodness. Come on, phone. Binyard Edge. Thank you. He is a Yowie monster. Booth, maybe? Maybe his name is Booth? Not sure. Thank you so much. Barbie's hot right now, so if that's Barbie, it is made by Mattel. I'd look that one up. It might be a harder to find one. Booth, Booth, Booth. I don't know why I said it like 16 times. Whose shoes are these? Who do these go to? Anybody want those? Look at this, you guys. This is so rad. What does it do? It's a Polaroid. There's got it. I must be doing something wrong or it doesn't work very good. But look, how cute is that Polaroid Pixel logo 2018? Isn't that cute? So this would be another really adorable dollhouse item. Look at that. Oh my goodness. That is awesome. I love it. I don't know if it functions properly, but it's so cute. Here we go. We're going to start this at $3. It's rad. Totally rad. And here we go. Three bucks and we are running $3 Polaroid Land Camera. Any takers on that? It doesn't actually come out. You just push it back in. It's fun, right? Thank you so much.  Did anybody want me to run this guy? What is this? He's flapping. He was flapping. Okay, vineyard edge. I'm about done anyway. I'm going to have to come back another night. Look at its little wings. It's got a battery in it. Maybe it goes in the water. It's by Zuru, a Zuru Turtle. Anybody want me to run the Zuru Turtle? I'm just going to run it. It looks like it needs a new battery because it doesn't look like it's performing up to how it should be, but very cute. And it's by Zuru. We're going to run it at two bucks. Here you be. Robo, Robo, Robot Turtle. $2. How cute is it? It's so cute. So probably a bathtub toy, you think, for a kid, or you could put it like in a little aquarium or something, but when you push down on the top, its little flappers move. It's so cute. It's adorable. Awesome. Thank you. All right. Do you want to do some more toy bundles or actually it's $1.30. It swims and walks. Okay. So it needs a battery. So it should do more. I got through most of the tote, but I am going to call it a night because it's $1.30. And I keep saying I'm going to stay on until $12.30. And I always stay on later. So I will do this again.  So please bookmark my shows. Even if they say jewelry, what I do is I go in and change the title if I switch up my show. So just bookmark everything. Did you already run? Yes. Do you want to see the unicorn pictures? Here is one and then the Pegasus. And this is what they say on the back. And I've got them for five bucks. They're still in the original packaging. There is a little bit of an indentation right here. I did dig these out of the bins, but overall they look pretty good. Here, I'll run them real quick and you can decide if you want them. No big deal if you don't. They're running at 15 seconds for five dollars. I think they're awesome. The Pegasus and the unicorn. Look, it's got a baby unicorn and everything. Super, super cute. Do you see anything else? Anybody see anything else under the items that are under the auction tab? I have this vintage bell. I have the marbles. I have this thing. I have this guy who's ready to go. I have the cat's meow. I have the little giraffe necklace. I have the tiles that say the little saints. I have an Adidas hat. It's a spell out hat. I have these stamps right here. These are all in the thing. If you want me to run insulator, thank you. And then I have these, this sticker bundle. These three that are brand new. These are chalkboard stickers. And then I have this little guy. So these things are still in the auction tab. If there's anything there that anybody wants me to run, shout it out now because I'm going to be going off here soon. Anybody see any of those items you'd like me to run? Everything's like three, a dollar to three dollars, four dollars. It's all in the auction area. If you've got free shipping, some of those items may interest you. The hat, you want me to run the hat? Okay, the hat. You got it. It's running for three bucks, 15 seconds. The hat is running three dollars for the hat. It's a beanie and it is adult. It's an adult beanie. Let me get a bag to put that in. Anybody else see anything? I'd love to sell those items. I can even maybe lower the start price if you see something. I love this belt. It's by Farrah and it's vintage. It is so cute. I can't believe that it didn't sell honestly. It's got the little vintage sticker on the inside that says Farrah. Anybody want me to run her? I've got her at four bucks. I would start her at three if somebody was interested. Anybody want me to run it? Say run if you want me to run it. I've got the marbles. I could change these to two dollars. It's a marble game. It'd be a great stocking stuffer. 223. Okay, sure. You want the shark? Okay, the shark is running. The shark is running. Where's the sticker? There he is. He's a big guy. He's a big guy. Thank you. Thank you. Did you see Anna? She's the same type of, well, she's infinity, Disney infinity. I think it's for like a game. If anybody's interested in her, I've got her as well. I've got this guy. He's wood. Oh, jeez. Did that happen? Hand carved wood toy. Anybody like that? Let me know. I forgot to put the sticker on the bag. What's yes, vintage? Yes to this, the marbles. I've got the cat's meow. You guys let me know. Anybody want to see anything? The stickers. This is a great lot of stickers, the chalkboard stickers, and then the paper house. These are kind of dimensional. Oh, that was an old yes. Okay, these are 3D stickers. Anybody want me to run the stickers? I've got them at three bucks. If anybody wants me to run those, I'll just run them if anybody wants them. Actually, I'll change it to two dollars. And the stickers are running for two bucks. I mean chalkboard stickers, how cool is that? Pretty cool, right? You're going to get them all for one, one money. Thank you so much. You're like free shipping. That free shipping gets you. Anybody want the draft? Necklace for one dollar. One dollar. Yeah, I'm just going to eat any shipping that's, if I can't fit it in a flat rate box. So we're going to see how this goes. I usually don't ship bigger stuff like this. These stamps are pretty cool. They're a new old stock. They look like this. Anybody wants me to run those? They're animals from the Tropical Rain Forest. Run these at three bucks. Anybody's interested? Three dollars on the stamps. This would be a great gift for a kid. See you tomorrow, honey. Thanks Fines by G. I'll be on at 11 a.m. 11 a.m. I'm doing jewelry in the morning. Okay, no interest in any of these things. All right, who's on? Who can we raid? Who is on? Let's see. It doesn't even show that I'm on. That's weird. I am on, right? I'm looking at my app.  Oh, there I am. Okay, uh, home. Okay, I'm going to send you guys to, I'm going to send you to anything's possible because she comes in to my show all the time. So let's share the love. All right, you guys ready? Thank you all so much. I'll see you at 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time in the morning. I'll be doing jewelry. And thanks for watching and thanks for all your purchases. You guys are awesome. And thanks for hanging out with me. I appreciate every single one of you. Here we go. Create a raid. Any A, N, let me figure out how to spell it. A, N, Y. Here we go. All right, it looks like she's, I think she's doing jewelry. Have a good night, everyone. Thanks so much.


I think of myself as a painter, which probably seems antithetical to everything that's been talked about today. But it is through this traditionally lone medium that I came to collaboration. My paintings now move, and they make sound. And it is because over time, I became interested in paint, itself, its physicality, and making concrete paintings late in music to make tangible touch through the audible, to bring painting into the 21st century into the realm of timeless sound. And increasingly, this work led me to have to learn how to machine, program, and work with collaborators. With engineers, for instance, I was an artist and resident at MIT in Mechanical Engineering. A number of composers, sound artists, in some cases, with artists around the world. I also founded and run Transculture Exchange, which probably some of you may know, as the organization that puts together assemblies, the partings of this topic of this panel, an assembly of law, of an assembly or conference of artists from around the world. It's an international conference on opportunities in the arts that is to let artists know about all the opportunities and ways that they can work with people around the world. So I'm very happy to moderate this panel on assemblies to hear more about other people working in a similar vein. In this case, Daniel Callahan from Emerson, Friedan Bard from MassArt, Hannel Engelsen from... Engelsen? Is that right? Engelsen? Yep, Engelsen from Emerson and Julia Kwan from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, who use the art to create shared experiences and relationships through and involving dialogue, conflict, legacy, and participation. Artists who engage and create communities and varying degrees in their own practice. The first I'd like to introduce you to my co-moderator, the artist, and the real brains behind putting together this panel and the co-curator of this amazing conference, Anto Estudino. Yeah, thanks. Hi. Yeah. Hey. You made it. Awesome. So Mary Sherman and I got together and brainstormed a couple of questions for the panelists. But she encouraged me to talk about why this panel and why I wanted to be part of this panel. So I wrote something. When putting together the different panels about collaboration, community was one of those words that came to my mind almost immediately. Personally, I feel community is a word that has been overused, and I personally don't like it. Some take it, some stay away from it, similar to feminism. Sometimes I love that word and I consider myself feminism, but it also is a problematic word. And this is why we decided to call it assemblies of collaboration, kind of like, all right, so that's not called a community, but assemblies. And assembly is the starting point of our reunion to then create a community. So then assembly as a way to start a community, to gather first and then create a community. I've always been someone who seeks connections with others, especially in the world of performance and filmmaking, which is my performance as my background in filmmaking is what I'm doing now as a grad student at Emerson. The seeking of a community is a very anthropological quest. Here's why. When I first came to Boston, I sought a community in which others share my artistic interests in making and appreciating films. I was looking to connect with those who share my skills. First, I looked for similar skills, but something was lacking, so I continued my search for community. This time looking for those who looked like me, spoke like me, and were considering my culture background, even though as I became a Hispanic here and the United States when I got here from Chile, I realized, well, this is not actually my culture, it's totally different. But anyway, I took it and I started to explore it. And here it was, connecting through skills and ethnicity, and I realized that community was also about shared experiences. When you share a similar life experience with someone like a family member or a friend or another coworker, another artist you're working with. And ultimately about struggle, and then something that Laura talked about earlier, one of the panelists in the second panel, she said empathy. I thought that was a really good word to put it. I became part of a filmmaker's community that's currently struggling, and it's empathic of this issue, which is that disappearance of film, and film labs, and film stocks. And we gather in this group in order to keep that alive. This is where I am so far in my search. I realize community and collaboration is an ever-evolving quest. This is why we wanted to put this panel together to be able to have this conversation, a conversation I was having with myself and I wanted to know what others had to say on this matter. Where do you start when you work with others and what is the motivation to include others in your artistic process? I leave you now with our first panelist, Julia Kwan from the museum school. Thank you. Thank you for having me. My name is Julia Kwan, and I'm currently a second year MFA student at the School of the Museum of Finance Boston. My upcoming thesis exhibition will feature colorful pattern paintings, sculptures based on Korean textiles. I not only convey my experience of being objectified and judged superficially, but also expose and undercut the very preconceptions people may have based on my gender and ethnicity. But today I'll be presenting another project that I've been working on alongside with my thesis project. I'll be presenting my collaborative drawing project titled Conversational Drawings. Conversational Drawings explores collaboration, personal relationship, building as subjects. I visit SMFA graduate peer studios to draw each other on a seven inch by seven inch paper with black ball pen while having a conversation over some tea and snacks. Today I'll be showing photographs of the drawings as well as my friend's studios which were where the project took place. The project was inspired by my desire to collaborate with others and get to know artists within my SMFA graduate community more closely. I've enjoyed my experience within the graduate program but felt that many of my peers and I were busy with our own works and schedules so I wanted to create a space where I could connect with my friends both personally and creatively. I wanted the project to be small, simple and easy so that the collaborators didn't feel like they needed to have any special skill sets or make big time commitments. Small scale pen drawings also appealed to me because I hoped to be able to do the project with not only other artists but others who aren't necessarily artists. The project is about enjoying the company and the many everyday and deep conversations shared. The drawings are not meant to be the purpose of the project. They capture the moment shared in a specific way but they will be far from the actual moment. Drawing becomes a good creative justification to meet and hang out with my peers. The structure of the project is simple and open ended. It allows refreshing, personal and meaningful conversations to happen organically. One set of conversational drawings usually takes about an hour or so but I've also had conversations continue on for about four to five hours. I usually don't schedule something else close to the end of the sessions and follow the lead of my collaborator when it comes to the length or topics of the conversation. I've had people ask if I have a set of topics or questions I prepare to talk about especially in relation to my thesis project but I consciously didn't make such goals or guidelines. I've bonded over conversations on issues regarding gender, ethnicity and societal expectations but that was because we wanted to talk about them and not because we were obligated to discuss and analyze shared concerns. I didn't want the project to become a prescribed collaboration or forced community. My friends and I usually talk about each other's personal history, family, friends, everyday routines, concerns, art, the classes that we're taking, thesis project, future plans and many other things. There is a great sense of intimacy that comes with drawing someone and especially drawing each other one-on-one as many people who have taken introductory drawing classes might have experienced. Also although I was making new friends in my new classes I was going to and I was going to many school events and friends openings. I realized that there were brilliant peers that I'll never get to meet and get to know if I was solely focused on my artistic priorities. So I've asked my friends to recommend someone within the program, preferably someone who I do not know as my next collaborator. I've had a great time catching up with friends and also make new friends through the project. After my friends would ask and connect me with another graduate peer I would introduce myself and my project by emailing or texting them and then we would schedule a time to meet at their studio. Sometimes due to the difference in schedules there's a lot of communication that happens over months just scheduling and rescheduling. The project provides not only the permission to stare and observe but also the opportunity to get close without feeling like it's forced or boundaries are being crossed. I get to meet someone for the first time, intimately gaze at each other, converse and give support when they're adjusting to their new environment and the MFA program. It's been an amazing way to become really good friends after just one meeting. I've had a first meeting drawing session that went on for four to five hours and it was during the beginning of the school year in October. She told me that she hasn't had the opportunity to talk to someone for that long since she moved to Boston. I've had another friend tell me during a drawing session that she wanted to do the project for a long time because it's been talked about amongst peers and it was the secret project that you had to be referred to by another student. It was never really a secret but it was kind of nice to see that this was being talked about and it was creating dialogue. I've also had really quiet conversational drawing sessions where conversation mainly happened before and after the drawing. I enjoy them as much as the talkative sessions because I enjoy the friends' extreme focus and their silent, intense presence. With a comfortable silence, the act of observing and drawing can become a calm and meditative process, a nice break from everything else. To me, the project is about multiple things such as going back to the basics. I've been mainly making paintings and sculptures and using drawing as a way to make quick visual notes after conceptualizing. This project is about going back to the act of observational drawing, really looking closely and possibly capturing a glimpse of the moment shared by two people. It's a surprisingly terrifying and humbling experience. I jump into my line drawings by starting at one point of the face and then move to the next element. I study the topology of the face and measure the distance in relation to the distance I already have on my paper. I feel clumsy yet motivated to find a way to capture a side of this person sitting in front of me. I am hesitant to draw with strong marks from the start because I feel like I'm stumbling, figuring out how to draw and correcting myself the whole time I'm drawing. There's often a mutual crisis of feeling like you're learning how to draw all over again. So I reassure my collaborators that the process and the conversations are more important rather than the actual drawings. There's a sense of intimacy, immediacy and spontaneity that comes with drawing with pen. There is also an imperfect rawness that comes from drawing while talking. Sometimes the collaborator is deeply focused on the drawing and his face falls and changes angles multiple times. Sometimes the collaborator puts on glasses in the middle of the session. Sometimes the collaborator draws really fast and I also speed up my drawing to keep up with the pace. Whatever they may be, I adapt to the changes and compile the different perspectives into one drawing. The project forces me to get over the fear and the need to perfectly capture someone's likeness or to capture them in a flattering light. Some collaborators have a hard time multitasking. One moment there's more drawing than talking and another moment there's more talking than drawing. Good, passionate conversations often momentarily stop the drawing process altogether. The basic rule to use the provided black ball pen and one side of the seven inch by seven inch paper is sometimes broken. I've had friends who prefer to use fancier pens that make smoother lines and a friend who couldn't work with the mistakes made on paper so she apologized and took out and used the whiteout. Friends who didn't like their drawings drew on another one on the back and friends who draw really fast and took out their own, they took out their own paper and drew four drawings in total. I visit my peer studio with tea and snack not only because I want to get to know them and their art practice but also because it's a way to thank them for their time and drawings. I like to provide any support or helpful feedback if they are needed. The mutual practice of generosity and sharing are part of the project. Conversational drawings has become my favorite social media because it allows me to actually meet and talk to my friends friends rather than not getting to know them or just having mutual friends. The project consists of not only the conversation between two people or the two drawings but also the conversations amongst the different set of drawings and more importantly the collaboration and interaction that happens amongst participants and within the community. I love photographing the drawings along with my friend studio where the drawings happen because it's a great way to introduce their work and recognize them as collaborators of the project. The meeting of the drawing is in the process and the act of meeting and sharing. The drawings become a means to converse, connect, and collaborate. There are no video of the drawing process or recording of the conversations because the recordings not only would feel like but essentially fall short of representing the actual moment but also would affect the conversation and interactions themselves. I wanted to create a space that feels okay to talk about anything without feeling the need to self-censor because of the presence of a recorder or camera. The project takes human relations and interactions as materials and objectives. The simple open-ended structure allows multiple interpretations and reactions. I draw in a certain way as an attempt to really study my friend's faces and hone my drawing skills but I'm always presently surprised by the diverse ways I am depicted in other's drawings. The project questions the concept of the art object and authorship because the drawings are not an end product but rather an evidence and glimpse into the fleeting intimate moments and honest exchanges shared by two people as well as the web of connections within the community. To me, conversational drawings is an ongoing project that I would like to continue on throughout my art practice. Ultimately, I hope that the project resonates with and is accessible not only to the SMFA graduate or art community but also to the broader public. You can follow the project by visiting my website or following the hashtag conversational drawings on Instagram. Please feel free to let me know if you'd like to participate and collaborate it through this project and or feel free to start your drawing collection with your friends. Yeah. I hope, that's fine. Thank you. My name is Daniel Callahan. I titled myself a trans media artist and I'll explain sort of what that means but I wanted to take the first couple seconds of my presence or before my presentation to ask you all to humor me in an activity, a group activity. So I would like for you to look at the person sitting next to you. If there's someone there, if there's not someone there or if they're far away, I'd ask you to go to that person and sit next to them so we can get groups of two people. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. All of this will be explained, I promise. Okay, great. So this activity really works well and I'm able to do it very quickly if we keep the talking to a bare minimum. So what I'd like to do is for the next 30 seconds and I have a timer. I'm not gonna do it any longer than that. I would like you to look at this person again without saying anything but just to look without any judgment or any thought for the next 30 seconds. You're off the hook. Thank you very much for doing that. So you might ask yourself, what are we looking for? And that if there's a title for my presentation it would be that. Again, my name is Daniel Callahan. I am a second year student here at Emerson in the VMA department. And again, I consider myself a trans media artist and what does that mean? Well, what it means to me is that the mediums that I use are not as important as the experience that I am trying to convey with my art. And my idea for why I use art is to create an experience either for myself or others or for all of us. And so Melvin Van Peeples said it best. He said the medium does not dictate the message, the need dictates the medium. And I really appreciated that and hold that dear. So if someone were to ask me, okay, fine, you're a transmitter artist, what do you actually do? Or what's the medium that you use? I would have to say that the medium I use is the human being. And I mean that on a literal and I guess metaphysical way. My canvas is the human face. The human face is a really incredible part of our body. It's comprised of over 43 individual muscles that can create countless amounts of expressions. It's the sort of media center of our bodies. It's where our eyes and our ears and our nose and our mouth and our brain is located, which makes it an extremely important part of our bodies. It's also dynamic. It's always changing depending on the situation, depending on who we're interacting with, depending on what we're feeling. It's always changing and changing to that different state. So it's an incredible canvas to use. And what I do is I use this canvas to create what I call masks. But I spell them a little differently because I wanted to get away from the concept of what we think of when we think of a mask. So when we think of a mask, we usually think of something that we hide behind or something that covers our face. So for instance, the anonymous mask is a great example. It's a way for us to assume the identity of something or to hide our own identity. And I think it's very interesting and it can, masks can be used in a very amazing ways and they're amazing things and very powerful things.  So what often happens with masks is they allow people to do things and act out in ways in which they would never do normally and sort of freeze them from any responsibility for their actions. And this way masks can become very harmful. But what I wanted to do is I wanted to use a mask not to conceal who someone is but to reveal something about that person. And I use paint. I paint directly onto the face. And in this way it removes the artifice of a mask and simply reveals the humanity in a new way. So to define what a mask is, it's a marking of the face with paint used to reveal one's inner essence or a state of being. I also consider it a ritual. And rituals are something that I'll talk about as well. They're very important to my work and something I'm very interested in. And I have three core concepts that have sort of evolved from this masking process. And that is identity, communion and change. I also don't like the word community at all. So I use the word communion. So what a mask essentially is, or at least the ones that I create, they're almost meta-portraitures in that you're painting a portrait of somebody but you're actually painting on the portrait that you're painting. So if we see here, this gentleman is painting a portrait of someone and it's really three steps removed from the original person. Someone painted a portrait of a person and he's painting a portrait of that portrait. And then this picture itself is a portrait of him painting a portrait of a portrait. So what I like about masking is that it removes that distance and you are actually creating the artwork on the person who you are painting a portrait of. Also, sorry, also with the mask, art is no longer simply an object that one can look at but is a living conscious sentient being who can look back. And the gaze that is usually associated with looking at art is in some ways democratized and also personalized. So where is this stuff coming from? Well, I did this project where every day for a month I would create one of these masks on my own face and I would then upload the little video vignettes and little writings that I did alongside that to a website called Month of the Mask fittingly. And that was really like a watershed moment for me in terms of seeing art not only as something that one does as a profession or as a craft or even as a lifestyle but as a way for someone to understand and find out about themselves and their relations to the world around them. I had a profound learning experience from it. I learned a lot about myself and about I was able to deal with a lot of issues that I was dealing with at the time. So it became a very therapeutic way for me to address the issues in my life which proved to be extremely powerful and important to me. So I knew from that point on I was like, okay, this is something that I really need to start exploring. But the history of this art form dates back to, oh sorry, this is more of the website, but it dates back to something I did in California when I was doing music out in California in the Bay Area. We had this annual ball that we throw and we didn't want to do the whole Victorian thing of people coming with masks. So we decided that we would paint the masks on people's faces. And if you're not familiar with the Bay Area, it's a very diverse area, but a lot of the people there don't really hang out together that much. So it's a very diverse area, but there's not a lot of cross-cultural exchange. But this masquerade ball was a way for us to actually create that cross-cultural exchange. So what ended up happening is we had over 200 people come to these balls and we had over seven different ethnicities. We had people from age three to 65, so it was cross-generational. And it was this incredible melting pot of cultural appreciation because everyone came with their own tradition. And it was one of the most amazing moments that I had experienced. And I was part of a musical group at the time. And so we did our first performance at this masquerade ball. So we performed with our faces painted. And it was such a powerful experience that we were like, okay, from here on out, we're just gonna do this every time we perform. And so that sort of became our calling card for the group I was in, Fear and Fancy. We would mask before every performance. And we would change the mask every time. We never did the same mask twice. So when I came back home, I was sort of missing this culture and I started to do it as my own personal expression. But the story of masking goes even further back, very far back to really the human tradition of body art, which we started to research to find out what it was about this thing that we had found that was so amazing or that was having this amazing result. And we realized that this was something that really is practiced ubiquitously across the world. Everybody has their own tradition of body decoration, especially among indigenous peoples. So you have people from Kenya, from Ethiopia, from Niger, but you also have people from India, you also have people from China, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Brazil and Peru, Mesoamerica, North America, and they all have their own traditions of body decoration and they all involve the face as a focal point of that tradition. So I realized that I had something on my hands that was very powerful, very deep and very human and I wanted to continue to explore it. So I explored why they paint, why do they do this? And they do this for a lot of different reasons. Some of them are purely aesthetic and they use it as an art form. But for other cultures, it is related to passages of rites of passage and transitions from different points of life to others when you're literally becoming a new person and the mask is therefore or this body painting is therefore used for you to differentiate who you were from who you're becoming. And there's a lot of religious and ritual applications of this, this happens during marriages, this happens during war, this happens during adolescence is turning into adults. So it was this very powerful effect and I started to realize that that was actually why I painted as well. Again, I painted at a point in time when I was dealing with a lot of issues, personal issues and it was a way for me to move into the next phase of my life and to get through that rough period. It also allowed me to see myself in a totally radical different way.  And often people would not recognize that it was me in some of these works that I would show until I told them. It also was a way for me to express what was happening within me in a way that was nonverbal in a way that was very organic and that was sort of immediate. And the ritual aspect of it again of the month of the mask project, I was doing this every day for a month where I'd wake up like around nine, I would sketch out ideas and then I would mask and then I would create these video vignettes and by the end of the day, I was done, but it was dark and I would go to sleep and I'd wake up and do it again. So it really became this sort of meditation and I almost felt like a monk after a month of doing it. But again, it was very powerful. So the project that I'm doing now is called Year of the Mask where I'm taking this art form and trying to bring it to other people and figuring out how I can include other people into this and how can this be a vehicle for other people's transformation. And the Year of the Mask project has me doing cross-disciplinary work with artists and activists and people from all different types of industries to come together to almost do converse through craft. So this is a work I did with a painter and she would meld some of her marking styles with what I was doing on the mask that I had painted on her face and I would use some of the marks that she was making in her painting on the design of my own mask and then we got a photographer to come in and to shoot the result. So I've also been using this as a way to, let me just check my time here. Okay, I also did this as a way to approach schools and younger adolescents because I realized that this was a very important ritual in adolescent growth and maturity. And so I started to do workshops in different schools and different youth programs, including the ICA, the Gardner, the Queens Museum, Boston Arts Academy and Milton Academy. And what I learned was through these workshops allowing these youth to create their own masks was a way for them not only to connect with their own stories but to validate their stories and to express them in new ways. And I also learned that the youth just jumped on this. They were so into it and ready to do this from the get, which was really incredible. And I think that really pays to the importance of this ritual and to their need for it. I also have started to use this as a platform for telling stories about people in my communities. This piece, Gloria Rising, is about the pastor of a church who went through sexual abuse as a child. And she, through the process of me masking her, she told me her story and I used it to create a film as a basis of a film. Another woman who I had a pleasure of masking is Isara Mendes, who is a peace activist in the Dorchester area. And she had several of her kids killed by gun violence and she has really started a mission to bring peace back to their community.  So when I sit down and talk to somebody, when I mask someone, it involves this really deep conversation that usually lasts for the entire day where we're just talking about their stories, who they are or where they are in life. And there's not a direct one-to-one correlation between the designs that I create and then paint on them to their stories, but it's heavily influenced by the encounter that I have with this person. So every mask is extremely unique and based on that individual, not only on the individual features of that person's face, but on their story as well. And there's an interesting dynamic, power dynamic, because this person is giving their face to me, to yous, and it's a trust-building experiment. And so far, I haven't ruined that. I hope never to. And I have started showing this work in galleries, in my community as well, like the Roxbury Community College Resnikov Gallery. I did a show called Communion where I was showing these newer pieces that I have been doing. I've also been doing family members. It's become more and more personal this project. On the right-hand side is my grandmother, who recently passed, but I was able to mask her before she made that transition, which was powerful. And then to the left is my father, and below is Gloria, and at the top is a good friend of mine. So it's been a way for me to reconnect with my family, to bridge new connections with people I'm not so familiar with, and with ways to engage people from all different ages, ethnicities, genders, and locations. So in closing, the mask effect, what does it do? It allows one to tell their own story. It allows them to transform. It is an art and ritual that allows for therapy. It's a new way of seeing yourself and others, and it's a celebration of what makes us different, but also what makes us the same, and what makes us individual, and what makes us a community. And that, I believe, is what we are looking for. Thank you. I'm freedom-beared. Hi, everyone. I'm freedom-beared. I'm finishing up my MFA in the Low Residency Program at MassArt. Thank you, Anto and Kim, for this opportunity, and for all the Emerson folks. It's a wonderful event. So I'm gonna tell you about Hopsketch. It's a piece I made in collaboration with my friend, Joe White. He's a Boston-based sculptor. We made it last summer. And before I start showing you the images from it, I'll just read you a quote. This is from Tom Finkel-Pearl's book called What We Made, Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation. It's published in 2013. He has an interview with Ernesto Pujol, who's an artist who makes participatory works. And Pujol says, public collaborations are about reinserting citizenship into art-making. They reintegrate art into society as cultural expression rather than as strictly personal gesture. And you've already seen that in some of the work you've seen here, and you'll see that in this piece as well. So this piece was made at a place called the Launan D, which is a rectangular piece of land right next to the Boston Convention Center in the Seaport District of Boston. To the southwest of that area is Southie, a working-class neighborhood. And to the northeast of it is the harbor and the Seaport District, which are upscale. So it's in this kind of transition zone. Here's a closer-up view. You can see it says the Launan D. Two years ago, this piece of land, it's about a block long and about a third of a block wide, was just a patch of gravel and dirt. And next to it, there's an upscale hotel and across the street luxury condos are being built. So the event that was produced that day was called Play Day at the Launan D. The Laun was turned into a sort of experimental art space with some grass and trees, and then over the summer, different exhibitions and events were brought in. So I was brought in for Play Day on July 19th, and this was the layout of Play Day, and many other artists were participating. And all the way over on the right, there's a strip of black top where the producers, Chris Wangro and Emily Hockridge, wanted something like a hopscotch and or chalk art and tape art piece. And so we got the call 12 days ahead, but that's okay, sometimes deadline makes you work inventively. So Joe and I got together and we had the idea to make an evolving hopscotch game where we would supply the players with instructions that would get them to build the game as it progressed. And we were thinking about how to represent these instructions and we thought we could have placards on the ground and then somehow those placards rose up as pyramids and then the pyramids tilted. So this was our initial sketch. And this was the cutout of the pyramid shape, and we turned this into a vector drawing. And then we cut coroplast, which is essentially plastic cardboard out using an automated router table. We learned that you can swap a knife blade into the bit of a router table and use it to cut out lightweight material. That was fun. We did this at the Artisans Asylum in Somerville, which is an amazing makerspace, 40,000 square feet. That's where Joe and I have our studio spaces and that's how we became friends, actually. This was a prototype pyramid. This is pyramid production. We had to crank them out. We made 24 of these pyramids and we had one instruction on each side. So we made 12 pyramids, two instructions per pyramid. And in my collaboration with Joe, this was our first collaboration. I had hired him in the past to do fabrication. So mostly it went really smoothly, but there was this moment where we had to make decisions about the text on the pyramids and the color of the paint. And I said something to him like, well, I'm kind of a steamroller, so you're gonna have to speak up for what you want.  This is a collaboration. And it was so good that he said that. And I was like, well, yeah, you're totally right and I'm sorry. And then we had a conversation about it. So more pyramid production. So this was the actual day itself. This is my daughter. I sometimes invite my kids to participate on projects. It's always optional, but I offer incentives, usually in the form of sugar or money. And in this case, it was money. So she was getting the masking tape ready. This is my son. We seeded the space with some squares and shapes. This is Karina Dishoto. She's also a mass art alum. She is a painter and a professional sign painter and she did all the lettering of our signs, which was fantastic. It was also unbelievably hot that day. It was in the mid 90s and the asphalt was so hot that you couldn't put bare skin on it. And we had anticipated that because we had visited the space the week before and we had speed ordered towels and umbrellas because we wanted people to be safe and we wanted to create this welcoming space for them to participate. This was the signage from the event. It was funded by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, which was great because all the artists got paid and they had this gorgeous signage. Just prepping more shapes on the ground, more shapes. So here you can see on the pyramid, it says write words to make people move fast. So we had three kinds of prompts on the pyramids. We had prompts that got people to draw different things. We had prompts that got people to write instructions that would get people to do things. And we also had prompts about place because I didn't want it to just be a sort of, oh, let's all draw kind of a game. I wanted people to consider place, like what's my relationship to this place that I'm in right now? How did I get here? What was here before? What's below me? What's above me? So you'll see all that in the slides. This is Joe, also prepping this space. He's a mass art alum as well. And one of the instructions on the pyramids was cast a shadow and outline it. So we did a little bit of that early in the day. Another instruction was draw what's underground. And so this is when the public were allowed to enter the space. So someone here drew a pipe with kind of riveted together. And then another instruction was make people start dancing here. So somebody drew a hopscotch board. And in each square they drew a different body movement, jump, slide, skip, clap. And then this nice grandpa kindly complied and did those gestures. This guy, carefully. You could see people couldn't even sit down on the ground at this point during the day, but he very carefully made this little flag. And that was what he made. One of the signs had instructions in Spanish. One side said, dibuje de donde vienes. And the other side said deja tu marca aquí. That means draw where you come from and leave your mark here. This sign said draw an obstacle. So somebody very cheekily drew the pyramid. Yeah, so, I love that. This sign said change this drawing. So, and my daughter earlier in the day had drawn a cat and then this girl was modifying it. And that's her brother. And he was drawing a portrait of his dad. One of the signs said draw the person next to you. So he was doing that. And then the dad very bravely laid down the broiling hot pavement for this portrait. And then the dad posted this to Instagram. So the images from the event sort of percolated out that way. Cast a shadow and outline it. That was nice. Someone used the actual object itself. These pyramids, in my practice, sometimes I make sculptures that are participatory. And the sculpture becomes what's called a threshold object, which is an object that allows the user or the visitor to enter into the space and to engage with the space. And that term threshold object comes from Janet Murray, who's a professor at Georgia Tech. She teaches about interactive media. And she talks about a threshold object that can bring you into a virtual environment, but a threshold object can bring you into a physical environment also. So cast a shadow and outline it. Write something that makes people interact. So somebody wrote knock, knock. And then the rest of the knock, knock joke kind of unfurled the rest throughout the day. Draw what's high above you right now. Somebody drew the sky and they also drew the symbol for money, which was kind of heavy. Connect this place to another. So somebody drew a trail of purple dots and the dots ended up connecting to another part of the space. This woman drew this elaborate kind of high fashion mermaid and her friend was watching. Draw this bit of ground 200 years ago. Hint, title, marsh. This instruction and this hint came from Jane Marching, who is one of my professors at MassArt. And she does a lot of work around sustainability and environment. She's got a thing going called the Sustainability Incubator this semester at MassArt. Many wonderful events there if you're interested in environmental art. Draw this bit of ground 200 years ago. Again, somebody else interpreted that. Throughout the day I moved the pyramids around and Joe did also, so we just kept the space kind of changing and filling in the blanks. This guy had a vision. He drew these two lines and I was like, what is he gonna do? And then 20 minutes later, that's him again, he had drawn this whole beach. So he was just like, that's the place that he wanted to be. This guy drew the heat shining on buildings. This was a huge love letter, basically. Cast a shadow and outline it. The pyramid became a, it became a sundial, which was so awesome. This guy had a vision. He had an image in his head and he spent about 20 minutes making it. There he is working. His friends were standing around. He kept going and in the end that's what he made. And I learned from his girlfriend that he had made one of the Chalk Art Award in high school, so he was really sick. So people played hopscotch. This guy was drawing a corporate logo and it was very tender, like a young guy, like maybe his startup or his dream and his partner looked totally unimpressed. People modified drawings that other people had made. This is just a panoramic view of this space in use. Write words to make people move fast, run, run, run. Fill this area with color. This woman had something in mind. She worked very slowly and patiently. Her boyfriend looked on. He was a little drunk, just trying to be interested. But this was a phenomenon, like a person would enter this space of making and then their friends or partners would watch and that became part of the interaction. And she made this beautiful kind of 2D and 3D thing. So just how the pyramids looked in this space. Write something that makes people interact. When was the last time you gave a hug? And something shifted during the day and people started writing these kind of lovey things so then love kind of entered the piece as well and that was really unexpected and gratifying and I think maybe people picked up on that we were caring for them and that sentiment came out. Draw yourself drawing. Draw what's high above you right now. These three young women talked and drew and then their drawings and their conversation came closer together. This woman created a space with her body and then she and her baby drew inside that space so it was a space within the space.  This was the drawing. Dots needed here. We had different levels of instruction for to help people if they didn't feel like they could draw. Dibuja de don de Viennes. This is the flag of Chicago. Another piece about place. This woman said I can't draw and then she saw an instruction that said tell people how to move and she wrote bailar salsa because she is a salsa instructor and then later on people complied. More drawing what's underground. That's the drawing that changed throughout the day and then it got this other cat above it kind of hovering, menacingly. Amazing. More conversations. More images of place. Hopscotch. Two mass art graduates made this combined chalk and tape piece. And then people wrote in other languages so they brought their connection to place in through language. A portrait out of tape, unfinished. Draw what's high above you, the blazing hot sun. Duluth, this is, turns out, is an amazing landmark bridge in Duluth, Minnesota. Beautifully rendered in tape. Lighthouse with rippling ocean waves. This is the South Vietnamese flag. I love Boston. And then one of the signs on the pyramid said draw the lawn on D. And nobody really had a concept of it in their mind so somebody was cheeky and drew that. More characters. Add an instruction here, be nice. And then someone drew the sit-go sign and Chris Wengro, the producer said, why did they draw the sit-go sign? I was like, oh, you're not from Boston. This is, might be the Tunisian flag, like the previous Tunisian flag, I'm not sure. And then, so, this is just to show towards the end of the day how all the images kind of accrued. And then finally, towards the very end of the day, somebody connected one place to another by actually drawing a road, which I thought was beautiful. And this is the last image. So we felt that it was a success because the rest of the lawn activities were kind of, you know, play activities, very physical.  And this was the result at the end of a long day. So, that's it. Thank you. Excuse me. Hi, my name's Hannah Engelsen. I'm getting over a cold, so I apologize. My voice isn't at its best. I'm a documentary filmmaker and recent graduate of Emerson College. And I'm gonna present for you a portion of my thesis documentary. It's called Jonah Stands Up. And specifically, I'm gonna talk about the collaboration between myself and the subject of the documentary, Jonah. So Jonah was an artist, an activist, and a comedian in New Orleans. He was born with muscular dystrophy. And when he was about 19, he found out he had a serious heart complication called cardiomyopathy. So the documentary, in total, it's about 22 minutes. And it's about the legacy he left behind of comedy, visual arts, and his activism, disability activism specifically. The documentary combines his comedy as well as archival footage that he shot, observational footage that I shot, and animations based on his visual style that we began to make together, and then I ended up finishing on my own. So for this presentation, I'm mostly gonna focus on the animations and then also how I set up the use of his personal footage within my film. So before I get into it too much, I just wanna give you kind of an overview, the timeframe of the project. So I met Jonah in 2010 at a film meetup group in New Orleans. I sat next to him, and we were instructed to introduce ourselves to the people sitting next to us. He joked that he was making a documentary about himself and that I should help. I thought it was a joke in time, I kinda realized how serious it was. So I started kind of filming sporadically. I ended up moving away from New Orleans, but from about 2011 to 2013, 14, I visited the city every couple months and would film sporadically. In that time, we started making an animation. We didn't really know what it would be for, but we started making kind of cardboard set pieces for fun just to see how it would go. I'll get into that more later. By about the summer 2014, I decided I needed to start filming full time. So I had a Kickstarter campaign, a successful Kickstarter campaign, and I moved down to New Orleans to film full time and then to also work on the animation with Jonah full time. I was there from September to the following January. In that time, Jonah passed away in December 2014 to be specific from heart failure. After he died, I actually got his old hard drives from his family and started going through all his old footage and kind of realized that before he met me, he had been filming a lot of stuff on his own. And I kind of slowly started to realize like, oh, he is kind of making a documentary about himself or he was kind of making a documentary about himself before he had met me. So starting in about January 2015 to about a month or two ago, I worked with two editors to edit the film and also I completed the animations in Boston. So originally the documentary kind of started out as an artist's profile, but as time went on, it turned more into kind of a legacy piece, more of a piece about this person and who he was and what he represented. So I'm gonna show you a brief segment of the film and it contains an animation sequence that we worked on the most together, I would say. I think all the different things that I'm doing are related. It's taking things that are real and things that can be serious or difficult to deal with. Flipping them around so they seem fun or funny. I made a cut out of the Grim Reaper and I did that one because that's basically how it feels to like, let's follow me around. But it's more of like, I kind of want it to be there because it reminds or motivates me to do something. Don't do anything, but it will catch me, it will catch me.


Okay, very good morning Monday 9th of December. Hope everyone had a great weekend And I would say without adding too much drama. This is going to be the big final push then into year-end this week Definitely is an important week for many different reasons Probably for a top-level macro perspective, you know forget the UK election I'd actually say the deadline looming this Sunday for the next round of tariffs the US on Chinese goods For 156 billion dollars that arguably is the biggest story in town for the global market But however short-term at least in the domestic space We're going to be focused on the UK general election We've already had a little bit of movement in the British pound this morning after a lot of the polls Which we'll look at in greater detail in a moment have been indicative of a Tory majority still and Just as a reminder if you don't already do so remember to subscribe to the channel hit the bell icon to turn on notifications Because I will be covering the full night of the UK general election live So we'll kick off at around 9 30 p.m. London time and then I'll stay for as long as it takes So at the time, we've got a good half an hour running on that session I'll give you a full preview how to interpret the news. What are the timings? What are the key? battleground areas to keep an eye on and then I'll be there to hopefully Guide you through all the information as it comes out on that night but before we get going Just want to have a quick look across the charts this morning and equity index futures a Relatively flat slight downturn here as I'm as I start the briefing in the European index futures, but nothing too Substantial as you can see in the US We're kind of sitting in the S&P here above the pivot likewise in the Nasdaq and the and the Dow in the FX markets Tiny bit of sterling out performance. It's just backed off a little bit here more recent trade but as I said a couple of more favorable polls that would be Reflective of the fact that conservatives at this point are still expected to secure a majority to what size is yet to be determined Elsewhere gold not too much change up slightly about two bucks training at 1467 Tino it's up about four sitting at the pivot at the moment and an oil of course after we had the confirmation of the cut that came by way of OPEC plus and Also some of the comments over the weekend about Saudi willing to do More than what they necessarily have to do as part of the quota oil prices down about 30 cents this morning, but still elevated In terms of holding on to the gains that were seen at the back end of last week and we trade Around a $59 handle at the moment Okay So I'm not going to focus too much on the charts because there's plenty of news for me to get you up to speed on and Thoughts on what I think about the week ahead So I'm just going to stick exclusively to the fundamentals for this rundown I will issue though the weekly strategy report a bit later on this morning And I'll include technical charts and setups as well But first things first I did mention that you know despite obviously a lot of the UK press if you are based in In Britain is focused on the election. Don't forget. There is the next deadline of tariffs due this Sunday And what I wanted to do is show you this chart which looks at basically the last couple of weeks of price activity in the S&P 500 the Dow and the Nasdaq and What we're looking at here is this green box on the right-hand side. This is last week's price action And as you can see We had such a roller coaster week You remember we started and we had two very big sizable down days. I think cumulatively Last Monday Tuesday, we were down in excess of 650 points if you were looking at at the Dow, for example now a lot of this came because of the renewed tensions between US and China, however, then we started to get some Decent US economic data come out and that very much was solidified by US non-farm payrolls on Friday Now you remember payrolls. This is what it looks like the print that we had at 266,000 was a surprise. You remember ADP came in what in the 60s way below market expectations So people perhaps were a little bit downbeat going into that label report But it absolutely smashed it now above the top end of the analyst most optimistic range 266 above expected 180 notable job gains in health care in professional and technical services Employment also increased in manufacturing as well Predominantly due to the fact that General Motors strike those workers returning to the workforce So 266 was the second best reading in fact that we've had in the entire year of 2019 Now one thing that I had been talking about and so to conclude the kind of matter is what does this mean then for growth in the United States as we go into The beginning of next year when we'll get the Q4 Advanced GDP readings for US growth and remember as at 1.5 percent at the end of last week pre payrolls Well that GDP now model which I referenced a couple of times has now been recalculated up from 1.5 to 2% and 2% of course would keep keep us pretty much stable from the type of growth that we've seen in Q2 and Q3 of This year so despite a lot of people thinking that the US economy would was Consistently showing signs of recent weakness and growth was starting to fade Actually That's that hasn't been the case as far as now the the latest model predictions would suggest so you can see here This last little uptick that we've had Just going into last week puts us the highest that we've been since the last two months for sure on these readings now If China US is important, what's the current status on that matter? Well China did speak overnight They said that they hope to make a trade deal with the US as soon as possible and meet intense Discussions before those tariffs are due to kick in at the end of the week So with this being said and and knowing ahead of time that deadline and the sensitivity in global markets cross asset To this type of news I would say as per the normal state of negotiations Typically, then I would imagine the political pressure will remain quite tense all the way up until we get to really the end of the week So certainly Friday could be quite interesting if there's been no headway up until that point before then Do we get the inevitable? delaying of the tariffs they kick the can down the road kind of situation and Then they we Revisit this in the beginning of next year. I mean that would be I would say the most net positive for market sentiment If that were to be the case or if we get any hints towards that type of action, however, the one caveat would be Remember the US economy as I've just described it is now Kind of flips into a bit more of a bullish short-term state as far as how markets are perceiving future growth in Q4 in the US Particularly after non farms and so although I'm not obviously looking at just one data point in isolation 2% growth in Q4 is still pretty decent all things considered that with US equities upper all-time record highs You know does has Trump allowed himself some room to deliver on his hawkish rhetoric? And so therefore does he just push the button and say we're doing it tariffs are going in and If that is the case then obviously given as I said where equities are positioned in particular You would think that we've got to see a little bit of a pullback from those types of elevated levels So a little bit of a trade-off here I'm a little bit indecisive myself about where I sit in between that of a delay and a can kicking down the road exercise or Trump has the luxury now of a little bit of freedom Allowed by the strength of the stock market in terms of where it's at and also the underlying economy Having performed okay recently does that give him the confidence to kind of follow through so yeah It's gonna be interesting You're gonna have to be vigilant throughout the entire week because obviously there's not really a set schedule for this type of thing So obviously I'll continue to share all of Trump's calendars and everything as soon as I have them Meanwhile though domestically why is China sounding so kind of upbeat and positive and kind of open to the idea of dialogue? Well Their economy is hurting at the moment and we've had this over the weekend the latest Chinese trade data exports dropped 1.1 percent in November their export data within the track within the trade balance Report was quite substantially weaker than expected So yeah as the headline would suggest does go some way to show why they want to secure a trade deal Imports from the US game for the first time since August to 2018 So they're certainly looking to do as much as they can To get the US on side in order to avert the deadline on Sunday Okay changing Direction let's have a look then at the UK election I'm gonna go through later on in the week as they said I'm gonna cover the whole event live So when I do that before the exit poll comes out, which is absolutely one of the most important moments of the night If you're trading it that will be at 10 p.m. So half an hour before that I will give like a full rundown of The chronological key constituents to watch should we or should the exit poll be inconclusive That's the type of situation then when every single Release by release is going to be quite critical from a top-level overview Usually those results start coming in the first ones the most early around midnight and then from midnight till about 3 a.m By the time you get to 3 a.m. You're in usually a pretty good position as to know what the end outcome will be Given historical precedence. So really it's about identifying those key Battleground potential swing areas that have been targeted by say conservatives in a labor Traditional stronghold but of areas of which were heavily voted to leave for example would be key ones to monitor So a couple other things then let's have a look at some of the opinion polls because I said the pounds being a little bit Little bit firmer this morning. We've just managed to get above some of the highs that were seen towards the end of last week And this is it Johnson has returned To key Brexit message as polls put him ahead So it has yielded some positives this whole notion of this election being particularly unusual Polarized of course by the issue of Brexit, you know, you're either leave or remain kind of mentality and the phrase of get Brexit done Continues and that will be obviously the message that he will be saying throughout this entire week now what we've had here is This is a look at the average poll of polls and graphically. I know it's a bit difficult to see but if you look right to the far Right-hand side, you can see the conservatives have just blipped a little higher and labours just dipped ever so slightly so although from a very Far view, let's say it looks like they're they're both moving in a exact Correlation of same Distance, but in essence if you were to zoom in actually the conservatives through What has been a whole selection of polls that have come out over the last couple of days have Reestablished a fairly decent lead of a low double-digit nature Some of the biggest ones the latest ovation poll the top one here as you can see Puts them back to 14 points. That's 14 points up from last week's nine and BMG which was the one that caused a lot of headlines last week because that had Labour narrowing the gap to six That's now going back up to nine and then all the rest are kind of in between at the moment You've got the latest one at 10 points and so on so with that being said there is I'm told the you gov's Lasts and latest MRP poll you remember that was the big one the lot of people were looking at about two weeks ago Which did actually pause a gap in prices Because of the the fact that it reflected a conservative majority of about I think at the calculation would have been about 68 seats in Parliament now the reason why people look at that of course as we know is the methodology was particularly accurate in correctly forecasting the previous election, but as I understand there's a secondary and final you gov MRP poll tomorrow and that one I think will be Quite quite telling fairly definitive because now these politicians really have run out of time And left something quite spectacular was to happen or there was some kind of absolute bombshell dropped from an opposition Party let's say on the lights of Bryce Johnson of which you would have thought they would have shown their hand by now Then all things remaining equal It looks like the Conservatives will go into this ahead in the polls by around a 10% kind of average Now few other things to be aware of Where is the Prime Minister today? Well, I think absolutely no surprise The Prime Minister today is visiting Sunderland in the northeast of England So obviously an area that voted to leave in the e-referendum in 2016 and any trader who traded that night will remember Sunderland very clearly The reason why Sunderland is so key and the reason I guess tactically that Trump and Trump The Boris is there is because Sunderland has a historical precedence that they have this Local pride about being one of the first constituents always to get their results out live And so normally they're one of the most I mean in the night of the referendum There are fairly large populace area comparative to other constituents within that kind of location in Britain When this time round obviously its first pass to post but Sunderland will be It's kind of like a symbolic area, I guess And so he's going to be there today banging the drum that we can't allow any more delay and and so on and so forth to get Brexit done The other thing as well is I'm not sure if you caught it But the head of Ipsos Maury who's one of the main pollsters was speaking on Bloomberg TV when I came in this morning And there's a couple of interesting points that I thought he said and one was that in 2017 You'll remember Theresa May had when she called the snap election a Overwhelming clear margin in the polls of an average of around 22 and a half percentage points But by the time we actually got round to the day of voting that lead had been narrowed Kind of spectacularly combination really of conservative Complacency The dementia tax as well that that went down very badly Corbyn did an excellent job at galvanizing the youth vote to really get involved so Couple of things there though that I think are quite different to what's happened this time and what that chap was saying was that Actually last time Labour made such good headway in that period But this time that hasn't really happened Corbyn's favorability as an individual is still deeply negative, but it has improved marginally But overall the gap really hasn't changed a great deal in comparison to 2017 One of the biggest things was as I said Theresa May's policies some degree of complacency as well Really hurt her chances this time I think a lot of people were nervous about Boris Johnson in the build-up to the election particularly given the The format of live televised debates, but even though he's not really smashed those He also hasn't made any Disasters there's been no real calamities and so therefore he's kind of managed to come through it largely unscathed and Keeping that one simple message about getting Brexit done. So, you know, if you're looking at the polls Yes, you've got to take him with a bit of a pinch of salt, but they do still show a Tory majority How big of that majority? is unsure and is there still a case or For a hung parliament absolutely there is but the chance of it happening seem fairly remote Now don't get me wrong if that were to materialize well, that's going to be a big move in the markets You're going to get a big reaction when the exit poll comes out And then it's going to be you know game on for every major constituency that comes out to see whether or not that is ratified by the end of the night, but I think so far The prospects of of a repeat of 2017 happening. I must say I think are a little less than What was the case that time round just given the evidence of what we've seen so far? I would say is my my general view Other things then to talk about away from the election We do have two major central bank interest rate announcements both of which come accompanied by their latest Financial economic forecasting so we get the the summary of economic projections from the Fed and the Euro system staff projections coming out from the ECB So starting off with the Federal Reserve or really both for that matter The Fed have cut interest rates of course three times now in 2019 They've pretty much quite clearly hinted towards holding for now federal funds futures not anticipating any type of rate change for at least the next 10 months and so I would say This is very similar as well for the ECB the central banks now largely an autopilot for the time being So I'm not expecting too much from this We will of course be here to cover the Fed in full on Wednesday night the summary of economic projections could be quite interesting any updates to that You know the SCP has generally on the right side been relatively Bad at predicting the future path of interest rates and so of course it continues to remain Under the spotlight of how valid of an indicator or how necessary it is in terms of providing transparency if it doesn't really provide a whole great deal of Accuracy same thing being said actually with Christine Lagarde according to the FT this morning I mean obviously it's quite an important one for her It's her first kind of run out as official press conference that she'll have to deliver But I think Christine's perfectly equipped from experience and skill point of view to be able to handle that type of pressurized situation But one thing that she has done is she's preparing for sweeping review of the ECB strategy So this would be the only time the second time in basically the 20-year history of the inception of the euro That ECB policy is going to be fully reviewed and you know credit to the Lagarde to come in to kind of pull the trigger on that Certainly establishing her position at the helm now The areas are just basically taking stock of what has happened thus far the advent of things like quantitative easing Targeted long-term refinancing operations negative interest rates and so on Also going to look at things like the medium-term inflation objective being kept between zero and two percent Whether that is still valid in today's new kind of policy norm when we have things like unconventional policy tools And then also future challenges ahead crypto currencies inequality Climate change so perhaps slightly less sensitive to financial markets, but all things that Obviously do need to be looked at to safeguard the future So yeah, I just thought overall with the the ECB in the Fed I wouldn't be expecting too much Definitely warrants though monitoring both of these events very closely But I'd say they are significantly outweighed on the the agenda by the tariff situation Looming at the weekend US and China and then also secondary the UK election that's coming up Here's a look at the calendar Just in case you need it I mean we've already really talked about all the major events that are happening the only final thing that I will mention Is you have US CPI coming out Wednesday afternoon as you can see in the center of this That's the other real economic indicator that I'll be watching with with some interest Otherwise if you do need to look at this calendar in more detail Or have it on your desk at the reference point then I did tweet it on Sunday so you can catch it there Otherwise, that's it. I'm not going to talk any further As I said, I will go through the charts mark them up from a technical perspective and send it out in the the weekly strategy report so All things being well, I'll see in the chat room and hopefully you can join us on Wednesday night for the Fed as well as The full UK election coverage that we'll be doing throughout the night on Thursday. Okay. Have a good week guys