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Hail to the Gradient

February 1, 2019January 31, 2019 vle Leave a comment

Gradients, or swatches that consist of specific colors that change gradually, are omnipresent in the world of art. Personally, I love a nice gradient–they’re inexplicably pleasing to the eye, with fluid changes of hue that similarly appears to occur in the seamless blending of a sunset.

In visual arts, a gradient refers to a directional change in color/dimension. For example, there are axial (one side to another) and radial gradients (circular). They’re everywhere: in app userfaces, in advertisements, in posters. Gradients are commonly associated with digital art, where they are easier to produce and more conducive to modern design trends. However, they have been seen in fine arts around the 20th century in painting and photography.

Walker Art Center explains that gradients are “edgeless and ever-shifting,” transitioning across an undefinable spectrum. Light is a spectrum, gender is a spectrum, identity is a never-ending spectrum of possibility. They remind us that nothing is ever definite.

Check out these awesome gradient-related things below:

Experiencing Cold Weather and Cancelled Classes

February 1, 2019February 1, 2019 Elizabeth S Leave a comment

“Stay inside,” my mother said. A few hours after the phone call, I would be doing the exact opposite.

On Tuesday, the call for school to be closed was deafening. There had already been an order made by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that declared Michigan in a state of emergency due to predicted sub-zero temperatures. Throughout the day, universities across the Midwest cancelled Wednesday’s classes in anticipation for the dangerously cold weather. Even MSU suspended classes for only the 7th time in history. For U of M students, pages such as “Overheard at Umich” and “UMich Memes for Wolverteens” were teeming with memes and comments made by students across campus asking for no school. In addition, students created a petition to cancel classes that reached over 13,000 signatures in a matter of days.

Fortunately, classes were indeed cancelled and the campus “issued an emergency reduction in operations” until 7 a.m. Friday. For middle and high school students across Michigan, snow days are a fairly common occurrence across Michigan. For college students, on the other hand, a snow day is a rarity. So what does one do when it’s so cold classes are cancelled?

For many students, the two days of cancelled classes provided time to study or relax. There was still work to be done for courses, and a day or two stuck inside provided optimal time to catch up or get ahead on schoolwork. The Wednesday and Thursday off also gave students some time to sleep in and recuperate. When not filled with people studying, the dormitory lounges were frequently filled with students watching movies, playing games, or simply hanging out. For me, the two days with no classes provided an opportunity to do all of these things. There was time to do some work without feeling stressed, and I enjoyed sleeping in. Yet, in addition to these things, I ventured outside the safety of my dormitory and into the bitter cold.

Now, this wasn’t a “I’m going to disregard any warnings because I can” decision. On Wednesday, the Michigan Theater played Your Name as part of the “Icons of Anime Film Series” sponsored by the UM Center for Japanese Studies. The screening was originally sold out and going to take place at the State Theater, but due to popular demand was moved to the Michigan Theater. This discovery, in addition to prior commitments being cancelled due to the weather, resulted in a quick decision to have a night out.

Despite the wind chill warning, my boyfriend and I left East Quad shortly around 6:45 p.m. Bundled in layers, the brisk walk to Michigan Theater wasn’t that bad. We took pictures of an empty diag with snapchat filters reading -11°F, and made it to the theater to find plenty of other students who had braved the arctic temps. So many, in fact, that the lower section of the theater’s main auditorium was pretty packed. After seeing the movie, which was captivating and breathtakingly beautiful, I could see why.

Since the dining hall would be closed by the time we got back (closing early due to the weather), we also stopped by a restaurant for dinner. The ten-minute walk back to East Quad, while just a few degrees colder at -15°F, was harsher. Thick wool socks were no match for the freezing winds. Literal frost coated my glasses, and ice droplets twinkled on my boyfriend’s eyelashes. We passed by a few people with no hats or scarves and wondered how they were surviving.

Back at the dormitory, hand warmers and blankets were quick to the rescue. It was so cold, however, that there was ice and frost on the inside of the windows. This only magnified the severity of what was happening across the Midwest, and the relief for students that classes were cancelled. Overall, while the night out was enjoyable, you can bet we stayed in on Thursday.

Links to further details on information noted in this post:

More information on U of M’s reduced operations.

News on the cold weather and its impact on the Midwest.

The petition calling administration to cancel classes.

What to do on a snowday?

January 30, 2019January 29, 2019 Jordan Brown Leave a comment

Once the University of Michigan cancelling classes for two days in a row, I thought to myself “Hooray! I’m going to catch up on sleep for the next two days!” Then I tried to remember what I did on snow days during elementary and high school. I would play outside for the day, or have friends over to play inside. So I decided that maybe instead of sleeping for the next two days I could do something else. So here is a list of things that I might do during our snow-days.

Movie Marathons! I am a huge fan of movies, my favorite genres are romcoms, sci-fi, and thrillers. When creating a movie marathon you have the choice of watching a bunch or random movies, movies with the same theme, or a movie series. Watching random movies is good so that you do not get too bored when watching a couple movies in one sitting. This way you can laugh, cry, and get scared in one day; which can be more exciting. Watching movies from the same genre, or with the same theme can give you an extra dose of whatever feeling you want. Watching a movie series gives you purpose when you are sitting watching a movie, because you now have to finish the series. I personally like watching movie series. You can always re-watch Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.

Read! As a college student, I never do any reading for pleasure during the school year because I am constantly reading for my classes. Taking two days to start and possibly finish a book that has been sitting unread in my bookshelf would be great. Cold weather is also the perfect reading conditions because then you are incentivized to sit in a chair curled up with a blanket and a book and are able to read for hours. It’s also nice when you are sitting by a window that brings in natural light and so that you can look outside but you do not have to go outside.

Game night! The last activity is better if there is someone else with you. A game night or afternoon is always fun and relaxing, depending on the game. I used to play a lot of board games growing up with my family, and I have not played them much since going to college. I love when an opportunity comes up and I can play them again. The best games to play during snow days are games that take a long time because you have all of the time in the world. I personally like to play Risk when I have a couple of hours to spend on a game.

Am I Stupid?

January 29, 2019February 1, 2019 Fareah Fysudeen Leave a comment

I’ve come across a problem over and over again that really embarrasses me as a English major and philosophy major and writer and avid reader and student for a long time who has been told that I’m quite good at those things, and it’s that sometimes I don’t know what the hell I’m reading.

For the past half decade of my life (in other words, when I stopped reading YA novels) I’ve been wondering about the fuss around certain canonical writers, like James Joyce and Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf, so I made a list of books I wanted to read for 2019. I started out with Woolf, reading Mrs. Dalloway, which is an entire novel dedicated to a single day in a woman’s life as she plans a party. It’s a very interior, psychological look into the details of everyday life, and the prose is dense and concentrated and shimmering with poetry— so much that it’s almost blinding to read. It’s like taking a shot of thick, concentrated tonic until you’re so intellectually inebriated that you literally cannot think, much less follow Mrs. Dalloway as she flits between dreaming about her lost hopes and which flower arrangement looks better.

Of course it’s brilliant, but kind of excruciating to read. It makes me wonder what was so wrong about reading trashy YA. And it’s not just Mrs. Dalloway that I’ve experienced this pain, it’s Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 541, it’s Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it’s Kurt Vonnegut and Daniel Defoe and at times even F Scott Fitzgerald— and I’m told that these are the greats, these are the masters of the English language and their work is the stunning epitome of writing at its finest— and I feel so so stupid.

I used to think that good writing was supposed to be kind of allusive, like it had to be mysterious and hard to understand in order to be meaningful, as though the lack of coherence or the superfluous language was what created this illusion of meaning. It’s like instead of saying “this is a gray crayon”, you say, “I twirl between my fingers the truncated trunk of an elephant, gas of overcast clouds in cylinders, the cigarette, intoxicating the youth with their ability to draw, to live, to create.” Did you know I was talking about a crayon? NO! That’s just bad writing!

And I’m not saying that Virginia Woolf is a bad writer. She’s amazing. Kurt Vonnegut’s amazing. Ray Bradbury is (belches) amazing. I just wasn’t trying hard enough. I need to read with a pen in hand, a book that I can write in the margins, possibly a few people to discuss it with for that good ol’ intellectual discourse. I need to put in more effort, more labor to reap the benefits of such masterful works. But how much effort, how much labor, how much highbrow diction and intertextuality and obscure allusions and plots buried so deep within poetic language that it’s barely there— how much before it takes the pleasure out of reading? Before I can write it off as being pretentious? Before I stop feeling like I’m stupid?

And maybe this entire essay is just me musing about my own stupidity— maybe genius works, in some way, by the power dynamic of the master showing off and the reader shaking his head in obedient confusion, like “oh yeah, you are a really good writer, because… I have no idea what the hell you’re saying!” Maybe it’s a failure of the education system to teach us to be better readers, maybe it’s a failure of the culture of the twenty-first century to want things fast and to want them NOW, even our literature, or maybe we’re all just a bunch of foundering idiots— or maybe it’s just me— but in the meantime, I really do want to know what all the fuss is about with this godforsaken book. I got my pen. Got my copy that has decent sized margins. I just gotta keep reading.

A Stranger’s Observations

January 28, 2019January 28, 2019 sarahshu Leave a comment

There are perspectives, ones we do not share that we can attempt to understand. A person who does not drink can empathize by going to a party, even if the purpose is to merely understand why parties are ‘fun’ and why a portion of the student body love partying. Another instance would be just the things we do in humanities classes, study, do our readings and argue for a point of view only to be presented with informed viewpoints from the other side. Trying to understand the other side humbles everyone, to know that there is more to the conversation than two sides.

Granted, not all perspectives can be gained this way. One is being a stranger in a new place. This comes with pre-notions, assumptions and stereotypes of the space we are about to enter. These assumptions are challenged, changed and nuanced as time eases its way through. We hold on to some, but we understand that there is more to a space, to people, to rumors than how we’ve understood it from the outside. Even so, looking inwardly while being an outsider is a special opportunity.

What are the special opportunities of an outsider looking inwardly? They come with the chance to compare values, from home and here, the new place. They come with an opportunity to try new things and to decide which suits our changing values, to decide how we feel about feeling differently. They come with an understanding that we will change our minds, that our beliefs will not fit with other people. But thats okay.

Maybe thats the point.

Junk TV

January 27, 2019January 27, 2019 Corrina Lee Leave a comment

For me, falling out of love was a slow, tumultuous descent. It was plummeting, crashing down an increasingly rocky slope, looking for anything to grab onto to slow myself down. When I did get some respite, it was always slight and temporary. And then, when you finally stop falling, you look up at the sky and wonder how you can ascend to such heights again. I am talking, of course, of my once love, Riverdale.

Recently, I re-watched the pilot episode with a group of friends in hopes of rekindling the flames that had burned so brightly before. And perhaps, it was little bit too much pressure, for the episode seemed drab, underlit, and frankly, uninspiring. In each frame, I kept searching for that spark of passion that had kept me coming back week after week since freshman year. There had been something there, hadn’t there? Yet, with each passing overwrought scene, there was nothing to be found. Worse, I could remember the moments that had been seemingly transcendent on the first watch. Riverdale, after all, is a show made up of moments splashing in the shallow end of the pool. It was a show made for social media OMGs and trending hashtag shipping. It was a show that felt like a rapidly rising tide, going up and up and up. It was everything until it became nothing.

Once, I thought I found my soulmate in this wayward show. I thought I could spend the rest of my life with it, or at least the next five seasons. Or maybe it was simply the right show at the right time. Not a deep-rooted affection, but one of those passions precisely because they are fleeting. For Riverdale was the perfect show for my freshman year. After a day of sixteen credits and more club commitments than I could handle, I would return to my dorm room. And instead of facing my ever-growing pile of homework, on Wednesdays, I would turn to the CW. Sure, Betty, Jughead, Veronica, and Archie had to deal with small town gossip and a murder, but at least they didn’t have to handle the stress or loneliness of studying at 2:30 in the morning. Their stresses were so dramatic, so exaggerated that I could sit back and enjoy their reactions to the latest arrest/football game/love triangle. At the very height of my love, I watched episodes, again and again. I lurked in the comment sections of recaps. I listened to hours of podcasts devoted to the show. I devoted so much time to this show and now, I don’t know when to break off the relationship.

If the first season was an explosion, the second was an implosion. Critics and my friends agreed, the show overall was worse. But still, I wanted to hold on. I wanted to hold on, not because it was a huge part of my life or even all that important. It was, after all, just Riverdale, a ridiculous, barely-meaningful show that happened to come on every Wednesday. One of dozens, really. I hold on because it is harder to let go. Harder to find another ridiculous, barely-meaningful relationship. I hold on because I have convinced myself that I’m still in love. Or at least, I wish I was.

Riverdale airs at 8 pm on Wednesday on the CW.