Robin Dunitz Mural Collaboratory
Did you know that USC Libraries is home to the Robin Dunitz mural collection - one of the most unique and important collections focused on murals in Los Angeles? Do you want to help design an innovative digital project using this collection?
We’re looking for creative polymathic students to join our team. This is an opportunity to learn about web mapping, visualization, data cleaning and analysis, archival research, and project management skills. You will join a team and partner with GIS experts, librarians, archivists, Web designers and other students at the Sidney Harman Academy’s new Ahmanson Lab.
The team will meet regularly over the spring semester, including an initial set of workshops where we will decide on an agenda, learn more about the archive, and discuss project ideas. For the reminder of the semester we will meet regularly (every other week with optional drop-in hours) and do project work that can include but not be limited to: building out an informational website, creating an interactive map of historic murals in Los Angeles, develop a network analysis focused on murals (artists, places, themes, etc.), and writing essays on individual murals or artists for Wikipedia. At the end of the semester we will share our work with the USC community and strategize next steps.
The application deadline for this collaboratory has passed. Please email Curtis Fletcher at cfletche@usc.edu if you'd like to receive information about future collaboratories.
Library Usage Data Visualization Collaboratory
This collaboratory will bring together librarians, artists, programmers and students to build a real-time data visualization of library usage at USC. To be displayed on the Ahmanson Lab’s videowall, the visualization will graphically and sonically register when patrons of the USC Libraries check out books, access databases, or download articles.
In building out such a visualization, the members of this collaboratory will bring their polymathic skills to bear in thinking through how best to visually and aurally represent the collective experience of a distributed information system, in this case, the USC Libraries.
The application deadline for this collaboratory has passed. Please email Curtis Fletcher at cfletche@usc.edu if you'd like to receive information about future collaboratories.
Art and Robotics Collaboratory
This collaboratory will bring together Ahmanson Lab staff with undergraduate and master’s students to build a machine-learning, artificial intelligence-driven robotic arm that paints oil on canvas, reproducing already existing images (submitted to it electronically) in the machine’s own “style.”
In designing such a system, members of the collaboratory will explore the nature of creativity, style, learning, and, of course, art.
The result will be entered into the 2018 Robotart competition.
The application deadline for this collaboratory has passed. Please email Curtis Fletcher at cfletche@usc.edu if you'd like to receive information about future collaboratories.