DAILY LOBO new mexico
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friday September 13, 2013
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
ARTS Lab wins Innovative Program Award by Chloe Henson
news@dailylobo.com @ChloeHenson5
The UNM Art, Research, Technology and Science (ARTS) Laboratory recently earned an international award for innovation in research and teaching shared by only five universities. The International Digital Media and Arts Association (iDMAa) awarded its 2013 International Digital Media Association Innovative Program Award to the ARTS Lab late last month. According to the laboratory’s website, only four other programs have been awarded this award since the iDMAa’s founding. Fifteen universities established iDMAa in 2004 to recognize “the outstanding achievements in digital media and arts through awards programs,” according to the site. Tim Castillo, director of the ARTS Lab, said they received the award for all the work achieved at the lab. “They were very impressed by what we do because, for one, it’s really about research, but it’s also about pedagogy and teaching,” he said. “We kind of do both. And I guess they were just impressed with the way we were thinking about culture and place in New Mexico.” The ARTS Lab works with a variety of faculty members and students on different multimedia projects, Castillo said. Castillo said one cinematic project conducted by the lab a few years ago, titled “Mayan Skies,” was shown around the world. “It was really a project that looked at the Mayan culture and
Victoria Lobato / Daily Lobo Executive producer of Dome Fest David Beining displays student works inside a projection dome screen at the UNM Art Research Technology and Science Laboratory on Thursday. The ARTS Laboratory was awarded the 2013 International Digital Media Association Innovative Program Award last month for their work with faculty member and student multimedia projects. how they looked at the stars, the astronomy of the Mayan culture,” he said. “It’s a little cinematic event that kind of traveled at domes around the world. And so it’s been in Hong Kong and Oakland and Mexico City and it’s really a phenomenal piece.” Viewers watch “Mayan Skies” on a special video screen known as a fulldome, which
are “immersive dome-based video projection environments where the viewer is surrounded by the video projection in a hemispherical angle of view.” David Beining, an associate and immersive director at the ARTS Lab, said UNM is one of a few institutions of higher education in the world that owns a fulldome. He said UNM was once
the only university that owned a fulldome. “It used to be one, which was us, back in the early 2000s,” he said. “And it’s up to probably 40, 50 in the world, with a lot of big players coming into the game: Notre Dame, North Carolina, USC is working on an immersive program. So it’s a growing field.” Beining also said UNM’s is the
first dome to be dedicated to education and research. Castillo said UNM recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation to build a portable dome that would make viewing immersive media more accessible to audiences. Castillo said the lab also received another grant in 2010 from
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ASUNM seeks Lottery fixes Homeless still by Ardee Napolitano news@dailylobo.com @ArdeeTheJourno
With the solvency issue still looming over the Lottery Scholarship, the Associated Students of the University of New Mexico continues to ask students for suggestions about how to ensure the scholarship’s long-term survival. ASUNM will hold a Lottery Scholarship summit Saturday morning at 9:30 in the Student Union Building. ASUNM President Isaac Romero said the student government decided to organize the summit to keep the students up to date with the Lottery’s status. He said the summit will serve as a forum for students. “It’s important to keep the conversation going,” he said. “This would be a good event before anything is due. That way we
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Daily Lobo volume 118
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could have a conversation and get students involved from around the state to make it more studentdriven than anything else.” Romero said he started planning the summit when he was campaigning during last semester’s ASUNM elections. He said that through the summit, he will continue the previous ASUNM administration’s initiatives aimed at preserving the Lottery Scholarship. The Scholarship is slated to run out of funding for full-time awards for all students in July. ASUNM hosted a similar summit in November “to come up with a list of three solutions that are equitable and actually work for solvency,” Romero said. He said students statewide would be greatly affected if the Lottery vanished. “It’s not just a UNM issue,” he said. “It’s an issue around the
state. But at UNM, specifically, we have the highest number of students who have the Lottery Scholarship in the state.” Romero said he invited student governments from other universities in New Mexico, such as New Mexico State University and the New Mexico Institute of Technology, to participate in the summit. But he said student officials still don’t have a concrete solution in mind. “We’re trying to make sure to keep an open mind and not to narrow ourselves or cut ourselves out,” he said. “I think it’s a conversation that we need to be having with students around the state. We are the ones who are affected so we should have a say on how this proceeds.” Devont’e Watson, executive director for governmental affairs
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sleeping on campus by Chloe Henson
news@dailylobo.com @ChloeHenson5 Despite a University policy, homeless people sleeping on UNM’s Albuquerque campus continue to be a problem for police and groundskeeping. Policy 2270 prohibits people from camping on University grounds. But UNMPD Public Information Officer Lt. Tim Stump said the problem of the homeless population on campus continues to persist. “We try to address it as it comes up,” he said. “We have patrols throughout the nights and the day time. We do a lot of walkthroughs through campus.” Stump said while officers do patrols, it is not possible to completely keep all homeless people from sleeping on campus. “You can’t completely control it. It’s an open campus,” he said. “You’ve
got the grass, the trees and a lot of availability for them to come onto campus. But we try to nip it in the bud before it even starts.” Homeless people sleeping on campus usually pose a bigger problem for the University community late at night and early in the morning, Stump said. “It’s easier for us to get to them because everyone on campus is calling it in,” he said. “But once it’s late at night, because campus is empty, they’ll try to sneak on and what not. So we try to avert that.” Stump also said the homeless don’t sleep in any particular place on campus. “It’s a pretty open place,” he said. “It’s a park setting. They have the grass, the trees. It’s a beautifully landscaped campus, so they find a lot of areas to kind of hide in.”
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