Is This Art?

Is This Art? Fringe Exhibitions began in 1999 as an independent curatorial practice. My primary area of research was the intersection of art, science, and technology. I decided go this route because I was interested in finding a way to engage the contemporary art audience. I was inspired by Eduardo Kac, an artist I first worked with as a curator on an exhibition featuring his “Holopoems”. I continued working for several more years organizing exhibitions in university art museums and galleries where support for this type of interdisciplinary work and experimentation was well received and encouraged. The research I conducted for a wide assortment of various projects would dramatically and directly influence the direction and trajectory of my curatorial vision. I wanted to branch out and start something new and different from what was already out there. Fringe Exhibitions opened in the beginning of 2006 as an experimental art gallery in Los Angeles as a project space for cutting edge experiential art. A range of ambitious exhibits were presented along with related programs and events featuring commissioned works, site-specific installations, performance art, robotics, bioart, nanotechnology, sound, light, video, holography, and virtual reality shows that created memorable experiences. To this day I have not come across anything quite like it. http://fringexhibitions.com At the end of 2008 the gallery in Los Angeles closed and I relocated to the Seattle area in Washington. During this transition I began to work completely outside the box with D. V. Rogers an artist from Australia on LAMoves: A Seismic Disaster Machine Action that was a socially driven, art-science installation comprised of a temporary disaster relief camp assembled around an earthquake shake table machine planned for an eight day performance in Pershing Square, Los Angeles during October 2010. Employing social awareness techniques, the project was a cultural engineering exercise attempting to create attention within the downtown Los Angeles community towards encouraging greater earthquake awareness and preparedness as part of the Californian, \u27Great ShakeOut\u27. At the eleventh hour a $21,021 city permit fee prevented the project from happening. http://allshookup.org Another continuous project I am involved with is Lightning on Demand. The goal is to construct the world’s largest lightning generator. The project proposes to build two 10 story high Tesla coils that arc 200 feet of lightning. Currently operational, a 1:12 scale model has been built for a series of artistic directed energy projects. http://lod.org Since the beginning of my career I continue to work with Mark Pauline and Survival Research Labs (SRL) producing large-scale robotic performances that rival major popular cultural events. SRL attempts to create new levels of sensory and emotional intensity in concert with artistic expression, ideas are transformed into visceral experiences. http://srl.org For the next Fringe phase perhaps another space with a similar agenda but instead of a store front, a warehouse that holds exhibits for longer runs such as museum length shows of 3-4 months instead of the 5 week run that are routine gallery shows. Currently I am in the process of building an apartment, gallery, and workshop in the basement of my house for artists residencies that will be ready this fall. Collaborations between artists, architects, engineers, scientists, mathematicians, writers, performers, and musical composers inspire creativity and are the wave of the future

EUROPEAN MIGRATION NETWORK. Annual Policy Report on Migration and Asylum 2014: Ireland

The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of trends, policy developments and significant debates in the area of asylum and migration during 2014 in Ireland

Going Fully Online: Reflections on Creating an Engaging Environment for Online Learning

When faced with the major pedagogical shift of moving face-to-face classes online, two professors reflect on the process, the learning, and the ways in which they can retain face-to-face engagement in an asynchronous online environment. They share the results of student surveys and colleague emails, along with their own thoughts about moving classes online

Social Ties, Social Support, and Collective Efficacy among Families from Public Housing in Chicago and Baltimore

This paper explores the social ties and capital of women relocating to low-poverty neighborhoods through the Moving to Opportunity program and a regular mover group who did not. Findings suggest the low-poverty movers seldom made close ties in their new neighborhoods; they also had fewer childhood friends and exchanged less support than the regular movers. Many, however, welcomed escaping the constant exchange that characterized their former neighborhoods and moved to areas higher in collective efficacy--experiencing neighborhoods rated high in child supervision, facing less conflictual relations with neighbors, and exhibiting greater trust in others-relative to the regular movers

Developing a Sense of Audience: An Examination of One School\u27s Instructional Contexts

The purpose of this naturalistic study was to extend our understanding of the ways in which consideration of audience may be salient in diverse students\u27 and teachers\u27 approaches to literacy. Data related to literacy interactions in one school were collected from the preschool class and three multiage elementary classrooms. Findings indicated that the school\u27s curriculum was developed through a socio-cultural approach with the students involved in constructing meaning of their world through interaction with others, through dialogue about texts, and through involvement in the arts. Within these experiences, students developed a sense of audience awareness and participated as audience members. In the upper grades, two specific instructional contexts, literature circles and project work, involved students in preparing for and communicating to (or communicating with) an audience

International Migration in Ireland, 2015

This working paper is the Irish report to the OECD Expert Group on Migration. As such, the focus of the report is largely shaped by the reporting requirements for the preparation of the annual OECD International Migration Outlook. The purpose of the paper is to outline major developments and trends in migration and integration data and policy. The principal reference year is 2014, although information relating to early- 2015 is included where available and relevant. The Executive Summary provides an overview of the main findings of the report. Section 2 discusses the main developments in migration and integration policy in Ireland in 2014, including topics related to migration in the public debate. Section 3 discusses the statistics on inward and outward migration movements. Section 4 examines trends in the population. Migration and the labour market are discussed in Section 5.Department of Justice and Equalit